Morgan and Emma

On my screen saver on my computer, there are many pictures of Morgan and Emma as infants. In fact, Bern and Mrs. Chen (Cathy's mother) and I saw them only a few minutes after they were born. The nurse taking them to the nursery knew we were in the waiting room and stopped the elevator on our floor so we could go to the door of the elevator and view our twin granddaughters.

Gasp! Granddaughters!

Tomorrow they turn 13. Teenagers from those newborns.

They are wondrous girls. Josh and Cathy have done a great job. We love them so.

Both of them are almost as tall as me--though where they got that, I have no idea. Josh is about 6 feet tall and I don't know where he got this. Both Bern's and my family were short and so is Cathy's.

But there they are--tall and lovely, moving toward being young women.

"Emma" was Bern's mother's name. Josh and Cathy's almost 10 year old daughter is Tegan Hoyt, My father's middle name was Hoyt.

We love them all so.

I got Bern a framed print last Christmas that say 'I didn't know how much love my heart could hold until someone called me Grandma.'

Any grandparent reading this know how true that is, It jut is.

Children of your own are precious and dear---grandchildren are beyond amazing.

Happy 13th Morgan and Emma...and many, many, many more....

Love you so, so much.

9/11

(only three years old, this sermon, but time to share again.)

 

Tuesday, September 13, 2016

9/11 sermon

9/11/16 Sermon (St. Andrew’s, Northford)

 

   

        Fifteen years ago today, I was brushing my teeth, listening to Imus in the Morning on my clock radio. (I know, I know…I’m not an Imus kind of guy…I’m a Public Radio kind of guy…but he was, from time to time, dreadfully amusing--accent on 'dreadful'!)

        Imus said something about a plane flying into the World Trade Center, so I went to our TV room, upstairs, and turned it on.

        Bern had left early for a dental appointment, so I was alone when the second plane hit the second tower. I had my toothbrush in my mouth and couldn’t comprehend what was happening. Suddenly I heard Bern’s pickup truck skid into the driveway outside in a way I’d never heard before. I listened to her tear open the front door and run up the steps calling my name as I watched, stunned and numb, as two skyscrapers burned.

        Bern ran into the TV room and said, horrified and breathless: “The kids…the kids!!!)

        Suddenly it occurred to me that both our children lived in Brooklyn, just across the river from the World Trade Center and I should be worried and terrified, not stunned and numb.

        It took a couple of hours to reach both Josh and Mimi. Mimi came up out of a subway near 890 Broadway and saw smoke in the sky. It was her first day of work at the American Ballet Theatre. We would talk with her as she walked back to Brooklyn.

        Josh was a law student living with a classmate who is now our daughter in law and mother of three of our granddaughters. He could see the twin towers from the street where they lived. Cathy Chen, his love, had taken a subway to Manhattan just a half-hour before. He was frantic. He couldn’t call her on her cell phone. Her train would have stopped at the World Trade Center exit.

        Josh stayed outside most of the day. Cathy got in touch as she walked across the Brooklyn Bridge and Josh called us. Mimi and Tim, her boyfriend and now husband and parents of our fourth granddaughter, found each other walking home over the Williamsburg Bridge.

        They were all safe. Praise God. But thousands weren’t.

        I went to St. John’s in Waterbury because I expected people might want to talk to someone about all this that was happening. Harriet and Sue, our office folks, and I were watching the news on Harriet’s computer—still total confusion and terror. We watched the buildings fall.

        My assistant at the time wasn’t watching with us. She was doing busy work and calling people about other things. I asked if she would come and watch with us.

        She told me this: “it’s just the chickens coming home to roost.”

        I let out a gasp and said, “you can’t say that Right Now. Maybe, years from now you can connect what our nation has done to this. But not now, not for years. Thousands are dead and dying. You can’t say that!”

        She ignored me and left a short time after. Our friendship and working relationship was over. She left St. John’s a few months later.

 

        But losing a friend and a colleague is nothing at all compared to the sons/daughters, wives/husbands/lovers, fathers/mothers, sisters/brothers lost that awful day. Nothing at all to that pain. Nothing at all.

 

        The pain of 9/11 is beyond calculation. It continues still, 15 years later. And it will never be healed. It may be ‘moved beyond’, but never ‘healed’. Never. Not ever.

 

        But we must not forget this: the lost sheep, the lost coin in today's gospel. We must not lose them.

        A great deal of irrational hatred was spawned by 9/11—hatred of good people, good Muslims, good Americans.

        In 2001, there was a mosque that met in the parish hall of St. John’s in Waterbury. We had shared much with them. We knew them well. We stood by them—they were the lost sheep, isolated by the hatred around them. They were the lost coin, branded because some, claiming to be of their faith, had created terror.

       

        Here is what I believe (and this is ‘just me talkin’) this painful anniversary calls upon you and me to do. We must love, not hate. We must embrace the stranger, not reject them. We must know the value of the ‘lost’ in our midst. We must never let pain turn to hate, fear turn to anger.

        All Americans were attacked that day, not just some of us.

        That is how we give honor to those who died, by refusing to be divided and set against each other.

        We must seek out and save those ‘lost’ because of irrational hatred. We must sweep the floor of those who would polarize and divide us.

        We must remember that we all arrived on these shores lost and rejected and celebrate how diverse we are as a people: racially, ethnically, culturally and spiritually.

        To truly move on from that awful day 15 years ago, we must embrace the diversity that truly makes us strong…that truly makes us One.

        To do less than that is to dishonor those who died that tragic day.

Amen.

There's a first time for everything...

Ok, our President (Who Will Not Be Named) did something I agreed with!

Shock and Awe!

He fired John Bolton as his National Security Advisor.

Every thing I know about John Bolton and his hawkish, war leaning views, scares me dreadfully.

At least he's not in the oval office whispering in the President's ear any more.

It worries me that the President seems to be melting away his cabinet and close advisors.

But Bolton is gone! Amen.

There's a first time for everything, I guess.

This is the first time I remember agreeing with what He WWNBNed.

Imagine that!

I never felt this way before

I'm one of those people who always expect the 'best' from others. I genuinely think people are good and virtuous and sane. Oh, I am aware there are people who aren't all that, but I withhold judgment for the most part.

But now, when I know 37 to 40% of the people in this country are 'on the Trump train', I am feeling different than I ever felt before.

I don't know many of them and have little to do with those I do know, but I've never felt this way before.

Those who adore a man I think is an extreme egoistic narcissist and most likely sociopathic suddenly make me anxious.

I never felt this way about those who loved Regan or either of the Bushes. Though I didn't agree with their policies, I respected their character. And those who supported them were simply people who didn't think the way I did.

But those who support this President without question are beyond my ken and understanding.

I just don't get it.

And it makes me anxious that there are over a third of the folks out there who think everything is alright--even 'good'--when I think the nation is falling apart.

I never felt this way before.

I'm not sure what to do about that.

Help!

never done this before

Today I visited all three of the churches in the Middlesex Area Cluster Ministry on one day.

I did the 9 a.m. service at St. James, Higganum and made it to Killingworth in time to celebrate the Eucharist at 10 a.m. (really shortened the service at St. James) and then went to St. Andrew's, Northford, where Bryan Spinks celebrated celebrated and was surprised to see me.

A guy got married to his wife at St. Andrew's in 1978 and is about to retire, but the priest then, for some reason, didn't send the marriage license to the town hall. For reasons beyond my understanding, the guy needs to prove he was legally married before he retires. Go figure.

We have a copy of the declaration of intention and the service record of the marriage, so tomorrow I'll write a letter proving he was married.

The priest who did the service is dead, so he's no help, pardon my flippancy.

So, we'll see what we can do.

But it was interesting to be at all three churches on the same day. They've been a Cluster for over 30 years, but they are really so different--in attitude and population and direction.

Interesting to see them all on the same day.

Interesting.....

Last Day at the Beach

This would have been our last full day at the beach. We would have spent breakfast and lunch trying to eat up the stuff in the refrigerator. But dinner would have been 'the Big Fish.'

Every year Tim and Mimi go to the dock in Southport and buy two red snappers. Bern stuffs and bakes them and we have our traditional 'Big Fish'  last dinner.

That didn't happen this year because of the evacuation.

We had steak, corn and broccoli tonight in Connecticut instead.

But I've been thinking all day about red snapper and those we love around a table with the Atlantic's waves in the background.

"Last day at the beach" is usually both joyful and melancholy.

Today is simply the latter.

Happy Anniversary to us.....

On September 5, 1970, Bernadine Pisano and Jim Bradley got married.

She was 20 and I was 23. By that time we'd been in love for five years---since I was a Senior and she was a Freshman and we met in Latin I class.

We were children.

It was an awkward ceremony since an Episcopal priest was on the altar of Our Lady of Victory Roman Catholic Church in Gary, West Virginia with the RC priest--first time ever for something like that!

The procession took longer than the wedding because, of course there was no Eucharist because an Episcopalian groom from a Methodist and Baptist family was not welcome at the RC altar.

Off we went to Gary Country Club for the reception--no meal, just snacks and alcohol in the basement for those who imbibed. Most of my family didn't--but I whispered to those who did in the receiving line where to go.

Then off to Cambridge in my father's car since I had wrecked mine a week before and it wasn't repaired.

My parents lived in Princeton, 20 miles over mountains from Gary, where we had our blood tests. They did the wrong test for me and I was on my way to give up more blood to be married when on the only long stretch between Princeton and Gary, the truck in front of me signaled a right turn, which in those places meant pass me on the right.

NOT THAT TIME!!! He WAS turning right and I drove my yellow Volvo--my graduation from college present--into a little lake.

In my father's car--we changed back at Thanksgiving--Bern and I traveled to Roanoke, Virginia and the Hotel Roanoke for our first night married. We were late for dinner and had to count all the money the Italian and Hungarian relatives of Bern had given us in envelopes in the receiving line and put it in the hotel safe.

We ate dinner in an almost empty restaurant with at least five African American waiters surrounding us, filling water glasses as soon as we took a drink and fussing endlessly.

Then, at almost mid-night, a Black waiter came to our room with a bottle of champagne on ice that my friend Dan Kiger had ordered and the order got backed up. The morning after our wedding I drank the whole bottle and had the greatest tour of Roanoke imaginable!!

We spent one more night and then left for Cambridge and a marriage that is almost half-a-century old today.

Lots of stops along the way. But here we are now. Two children in happy marriages and four granddaughters later, moving into our 50th year together.

Can't get much better than that, so far and I can tell.

Can't get much better than that....

Happy anniversary to us!!!!