There were fireworks tonight from down the road at the park across from the high school.
I was shocked.
9/11 is a day of morning, introspection, reflection and seek a new way of life--not a 'celebration' that includes fireworks.
Take a deep breath: and if you are old enough to remember, think back to this day on a Tuesday 20 years ago.
Find anything to celebrate with fireworks?
I didn't think so.
I'll try to find out why that happened here in Cheshire.
I find it humiliating....
I've said it before about Republican governors, but now I'm saying it about the party at large--Republicans want to kill people!
Biden's 6 point plan to handle covid is right in so many ways. But many Republicans--including Mike Pence--oppose it vigorously.
They say it takes away constitutional rights to make choices about your body.
But what about the anti-abortion laws that take away women's constitutional rights about their bodies?
Or what about voting restriction laws that take away the constitutional rights to vote?
There are lots of mandates we follow all our lives:
--stop at red lights and stop signs
--don't steal or kill or speed
--pay your taxes
--don't smoke in non-smoking areas
--vaccinate your children so they can go to school against major killers--Covid is one of those
--don't drive drunk or high
--stay on your side of the road
Why has the Republican party become the party of death from this pandemic?
I just don't get it!!!
I was upstairs, brushing my teeth, when I heard the TV in the room next to ours go to an alert and then a frantic reporter speaking loudly.
I went into the TV room, toothbrush still in my mouth, and watched in horror at the plane that had flown into the first tower of the twin towers.
I watched in utter disbelief until I heard my wife, Bern, slide her truck at high speed into the driveway.
She was yelling when she jumped out and yelling when she hit the front door and yelling up the steps as she came to me.
“Did you hear from Josh and Mimi? DID YOU? DID YOU?”
It wasn’t until that moment that I remembered that both our children were in New York City!
We didn’t hear from them for what seemed like a decade but was probably about 90 minutes.
Mimi came up from the subway at the American Ballet theatre, where she worked, just as the second plane hit. The abject terror on the streets shocked her deeply and she had an hour and a half walk back to her apartment in Brooklyn.
Josh was in Brooklyn already, where he was going to law school. His classmate and girlfriend (and now our daughter in law) Cathy Chen had been on the last subway to pass the Twin Towers station and she was walking home as well.
Bern and I felt better knowing they were safe, but not much, as we continued to watch both the buildings collapse and I finally remembered to take my toothbrush out of my mouth.
I’m sure all of you—and everyone over 25—remembers where they were that tragic morning two decades ago.
A friend of mine, who was also in New York, lost 6 of the 9 people she had invited to dinner two days later.
So many people lost people they cared deeply about and we all lost our sense of safety.
Some might want to cuss about the terrorists who did such damage to our national psyche and got us and allies into an unwinnable 20 year war that cost many more American lives.
But I want to mourn the dead and to point to the heroes and heroines of 9/11.
Give thanks for those brave first responders who got as many out of the towers as they could. Fire and police member who put their own lives in jeopardy to seek to save others.
Give thanks for the brave passengers on the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania that gave up their lives so that many may be saved from death.
Give thanks for the clergy and psychologists who sought to help surviving family and friends to deal with their pain and guilt.
Give thanks for the doctors and nurses who cared for the injured and brought them back to health.
Give thanks to those who cleaned up the aftermath of 9/11, many of whom were undocumented immigrants and Native Americans. Many died later from the dust they had inhaled and all of them have continuing health issues from the labor clearing away the debris.
Give thanks for those who fed and housed those workers during their long weeks of work.
Give thanks to all who had funerals for the dead, even without proper remains.
In one of America’s worst tragedies, America’s best qualities were shown in our those who worked so very hard to make things better.
And also, on this 20th anniversary, let us take a moment of silence to mourn for the many who lost their lives.
(Pause)
“Give rest, O Christ, to all who died on that terrible day, with your saints, where sorrow and pain are no more, neither sighing, but life eternal. Amen”
President Biden visited the Gulf States earlier, but today spend all day in New Jersey and New York, viewing the damage from Ida's water there.
Some of videos--especially of NYC's subway stations--was startling.
People died from the water.
Those who don't believe in climate change theory aren't paying attention to the weather events--drought, forest fires, heat in the south and south-west, hurricanes and their damage all up the east coast.
Get real!
We have to do all we can to preserve this planet for my grand-daughters and save lives along the way.
It may be too late.
It just might be....
When we went to Oak Island, our rental SUV had a license plate from New Mexico.
I liked that.
I imagined people at the beach seeing our license plate and thinking, "they came a long way to the beach!"
I often feel I'm from far away.
Like a galaxy far, far away.
I don't understand things here on earth.
Like:
--why people won't get the vaccine
--why there is a billboard near Waterbury saying "Unmask our Kids"
--like why states like Texas oppose a woman's right to do what she wants about her body
--why the Governor of Florida is opposed to mask mandates
--why some people still think Trump won the election
--why the rebellion at the Capitol didn't bring us together
--why states are trying to erode voting rights
--why people of color are still under more police pressure that I am
--why MAGA folks are so upset with Biden getting us out of America's longest war when Trump set the time-line
--why after incredible forest fires and Ida's making people homeless people still deny climate change
--why Republicans in congress oppose much needed infrastructure legislation and money to help the poor
I must not be from here, but from a galaxy far, far away...
Tomorrow is Bern's and my 51st Anniversary.
She was 20 and I was 23--we had no idea what we were getting into and for how long.
I was a Senior in high school and she was a freshman.
We met in Latin class.
Amo, Amas, Amat.
I owe our marriage our two children and four granddaughters to Shimmer College.
Shimmer was a 'great books' school in the mid-west and I thought I wanted to go there.
Shimmer required a year of foreign language, so I took the Latin class (having avoided languages until then).
And there we met. Five years later we were married and moved to Cambridge, MA for my second year of Harvard Divinity School.
She went to college in Boston for that year then we moved back to Morgantown so she could finish her degree.
We lived in a trailer and were on food stamps since my promised job as a school teacher fell through once they saw my long hair and beard at the Board of Education.
There were other bumps along the road, without question.
But we bumped through them all, even a six month separation in New Haven.
And here we are, over half-a-century of our lives later.
68,5% of my life I've been married to her.
And I am so full of joy for all we've meant to each other.
Happy Anniversary and so much more, my love....
In today’s Gospel we learn some troubling things about Mark’s Jesus.
But we also learn some wondrous things.
First of all, the Syrophoenician woman.
In the first century, Jewish law and practice forbade a man from speaking to a woman who was not his wife.
Over and over, Jesus breaks that rule. And today he speaks to a Gentile woman.
Though Jesus had traveled to Tyre—about as far north as you can go in Israel—on the Mediterranean Sea. He is trying to escape the turmoil his ministry has caused in Jerusalem and around Jerusalem.
Some of his followers want to proclaim him King and the Pharisees was to stop his ministry.
He enters a house trying to not let anyone know he was there, but the woman finds him.
She falls on her knees and begs Jesus to cast out the unclean spirit that is torturing her daughter.
Jesus’ answer is disturbing. “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”
What an insult! He is calling the woman and her daughter ‘dogs’!
(We might understand his words better if we remember how Jews looked down on Gentiles. The Gentiles were ‘unclean’. If a Jew encountered a Gentile in his business or even on the street, the Jew would perform a ‘cleansing ritual’ to remove the uncleanliness they had been in the presence of.
That attitude continued in the earliest church—Jewish Christians considered Gentile Christians as beneath them. It was only the missionary travels of St. Paul that began to change that attitude.)
Interestingly, the woman does not rebuke Jesus’ words, but says, instead, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”
So, in a wondrous moment, Jesus realizes how harsh he was being and says, “For saying that, you may go—the demon has left you daughter.”
She went home and found her daughter healed.
Jesus can change his mind in this passage. That is good news indeed!
And he shows compassion to someone very different from himself.
If only we can have that compassion toward those who are different from us.
As we heard in James’ Epistle today, “MERCY TRIUMPHS OVER JUDGMENT.”
Have Mercy, my friends, have mercy.
Unable to escape recognition, Jesus returns toward Galilee.
Again, people know who he is and brings a man who was deaf and unable to speak.
Jesus takes the man aside, to hide his miracle from the crowds. Jesus put his fingers in the man’s ears and spat and touched the man’s tongue.
“EPHPHATHA”, Jesus says—which means “be opened.” Then the man was able to hear and speak.
Jesus tells the crowds not to tell anyone what he had done. Good luck with that!
The people were astounded and spread the news of Jesus’ power far and wide.
If I could have any wish I wanted today, it would be that Jesus would proclaim to each of us, “EPHPHATHA!” and our eyes and ears and minds would be opened—opened to the neighbors far and wide the James reminded us today to love.
“Openness” is so much more merciful, more gracious, more compassionate and more productive that having closed mines and closed hearts to all around us.
“EPHPHATHA!” my friends.
EPHPHATHA!
Amen and amen.
