A Sunday without church

 As a 'Priest-in-charge', I'm only supposed to serve on three Sundays a month. So, since October has 5 Sundays, I was off today and will be again on the 31st.

A Sunday without church is like a day without chocolate.

I don't go to church unless I'm preaching or celebrating.

I often say, "If I'm not 'doing it', I probably won't go to church."

And that's true.

But a Sunday without church is disconcerting.

It's like I don't know what day it is.

I sleep in, as I often do, and wonder where I'm supposed to be.

I look at my calendar to remember it's a Sunday without church.

I wander around all day since 'church' takes up my mornings on Sunday.

I like a day off.

But it's odd and strange.

I've been doing this for 40 years--more than half my life.

So, a Sunday without church throws me off badly.

I burnt the hell out of my hand!

I fixed marvelous swordfish steak for dinner.

I seared it on both sides after rinsing and patting it dry, adding olive oil, lemon juice, salt, pepper, sage and parsley.

Then I put it in a 400 degree oven for 12 minutes.

I took it out of the oven with an oven glove, but trying to get it nearer the plates, I took the metal handle of the cast iron skillet in my right hand.

I threw a fork I was holding across the kitchen, screamed obscenities and ran across the room to put my head on the wall.

Bern told me to hold it under cold water and put a wet paper towel on it.

I did that.

We both agreed it was magnificent swordfish, but my hand still hurts after several doses of cold water and antibiotic salve.

My 'right hand', I might add--the hand I do everything with from opening doors to writing with a pen to wiping myself after going to the bathroom.

I'm getting antibiotic salve on my keyboard writing this.

I may have blisters by morning.

400 degrees us Hot! Hot!

 

"Winter is coming...."

I'm a great fan of "Lord of the Rings"--so that "Winter is coming" quote is dear to my heart.

But the truth is, winter is coming.

The first week or so of October felt like September here in southern New England. But now the temp is in the low 50's/high 40's at night and today it never reached 60.

Leaves are falling everywhere.

A chill is in the air.

Even when the sun shines--not much--the chill is there.

It's only a matter of time, John Snow....

Winter is coming....

 

It's time again

...to share my first post again so you'll know where this blog comes from.

Sunday, March 8, 2009

My first post

Sitting under the Castor Oil Tree (March 7, 2009)

The character in the Bible I have always been drawn to is Jonah. I identify with his story. Like Jonah, I have experienced being taken where I didn't want to go by God and I've been disgruntled with the way things went. The belly of a big old fish isn't a pleasant means of travel either!

The story ends (in case you don't know it) with Jonah upset and complaining on a hillside over the city of Nineveh, which God has saved through Jonah. Jonah didn't want to go there to start with--hence the ride in the fish stomach--and predicted that God would save the city though it should have been destroyed for its wickedness. "You dragged me half way around the world," he tells God, "and didn't destroy the city....I knew it would turn out this way. I'm angry, so angry I could die!"

God causes a tree to grow to shade Jonah from the sun (scholars think it might have been a castor oil tree--the implications are astonishing!). Then God sends a worm to kill the tree. Well, that sets Jonah off! "How dare you kill my tree?" he challenges the creator. "I'm so angry I could die...."

God simply reminds him that he is upset at the death of a tree he didn't plant or nurture and yet he doesn't see the value of saving all the people of the great city Nineveh...along with their cattle and beasts.

And the story ends. No resolution. Jonah simply left to ponder all that. There's no sequel either--no "Jonah II" or "Jonah: the next chapter", nothing like that. It's just Jonah, sitting under the bare branches of the dead tree, pondering.

What I want to do is use this blog to do simply that, ponder about things. I've been an Episcopal priest for over 30 years. I'm approaching a time to retire and I've got a lot of pondering left to do--about God, about the church, about religion, about life and death and everything involved in that. Before the big fish swallowed me up and carried me to my own Nineva (ordination in the Episcopal Church) I had intended a vastly different life. I was going to write "The Great American Novel" for starters and get a Ph.D. in American Literature and disappear into some small liberal arts college, most likely in the Mid-Atlantic states and teach people like me--rural people, Appalachians and southerners, simple people, deep thinkers though slow talkers...lovely for all that--to love words and write words themselves.

God (I suppose, though I even ponder that...) had other ideas and I ended up spending the lion's share of my priesthood in the wilds of two cities in Connecticut (of all places) among tribes so foreign to me I scarcely understood their language and whose customs confounded me. And I found myself often among people (The Episcopal Cult) who made me anxious by their very being. Which is why I stuck to urban churches, I suppose--being a priest in Greenwich would have sent me into some form of shock...as I would have driven them to hypertension at the least.

I am one who 'ponders' quite a bit and hoped this might be a way to 'ponder in print' for anyone else who might be leaning in that direction to read.

Ever so often, someone calls my bluff when I go into my "I'm just a boy from the mountains of West Virginia" persona. And I know they're right. I've lived too long among the heathens of New England to be able to avoid absorbing some of their alien customs and ways of thinking. Plus, I've been involved in too much education to pretend to be a rube from the hills. But I do, from time to time, miss that boy who grew up in a part of the world as foreign as Albania to most people, where the lush and endless mountains pressed down so majestically that there were few places, where I lived, that were flat in an area wider than a football field. That boy knew secrets I am only beginning, having entered my sixth decade of the journey toward the Lover of Souls, to remember and cherish.

My maternal grandmother, who had as much influence on me as anyone I know, used to say--"Jimmy, don't get above your raisin'". I probably have done that, in more ways that I'm able to recognize, but I ponder that part of me--buried deeply below layer after layer of living (as the mountains were layer after layer of long-ago life).

Sometimes I get a fleeting glimpse of him, running madly into the woods that surrounded him on all sides, spending hours seeking paths through the deep tangles of forest, climbing upward, ever upward until he found a place to sit and look down on the little town where he lived--spread out like a toy village to him--so he could ponder, alone and undisturbed, for a while.

When I was in high school, I wrote a regular column for the school newspaper called "The Outsider". As I ponder my life, I realize that has been a constant: I've always felt just beyond the fringe wherever I was. I've watched much more than I've participated. And I've pondered many things.

So, what I've decided to do is sit here on the hillside for a while, beneath the ruins of the castor oil tree and ponder some more. And, if you wish, share my ponderings with you--whoever you are out there in cyber-Land.

Two caveates: I'm pretty much a Luddite when it comes to technology--probably smart enough to learn about it but never very interested, so this blog is an adventure for me. My friend Sandy is helping me so it shouldn't be too much of a mess. Secondly, I've realized writing this that there is no 'spell check' on the blog. Either I can get a dictionary or ask your forgiveness for my spelling. I'm a magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa ENGLISH major (WVU '69) who never could conquer spelling all the words I longed to write.

I suppose I'll just ask your tolerance.

 

 

Some quotes to ponder...

 "Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward;/They may be beaten,/ but they may start a winning game."  --Goethe

"Happiness,/ Not in another place.../ Nor for another hour,/ But this hour."    --Walt Whitman

"Ever tried.

Ever failed

No matter.

Try again.

Fail again.

Fail better."   --Samuel Beckett

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."    --Mark Twain

"There is no need for temples, no need for complicated philosophies, my brain and my heart are my temples; my philosophy is kindness."

                                                            --Dalai Lama

"Strive for that greatness of spirit that measures life not by it disappointments but by its possibilities."  --W.E.B. Du Bois

"A word ought to be tested before it is spoken." --St. Ambrose

"The only way to get it together is together."  --Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi

"It takes a life to realize what life is all about. And life is all about this moment."  --John Wallowitch

"Love is not an emotion. It is a policy."  --Hugh Bishop

(Thanks to the Mastery Foundation for my box of quotes. Shalom. Jim)

Broken-hearted

The Yankees lost last night. Their season is over. I'm not even going to say, "wait 'til next year!"

I've been a Yankee fan all my life.

When my father was in NYC ready to ship out to Europe for WW II, someone gave him tickets to a World Series Game--Yankees and Dodgers (still in Brooklyn).

He and his friends went to the game and he decided whoever won would be his 'team'. Not many to choose from in Southern WV! The Reds, I guess, or what was then the Washington Nationals.

Needless to say, the Yankees won and my dad infected me with Yankee love.

When I was a kid they were head and shoulders over everyone but the affor-mentioned Dodgers.

The sports reporter on Channel 6 in Bluefield (one of only three channels we got) would start his report by saying, "Let's see who the Yankees clobbered."

Nothing like that time for Yankee fans.

But I hoped against hope for this year.

Heart-broken again.

 

 

 

 

How I've changed

I haven't been nearly as controversial on my blog since "he who will not be named" left office.

So, I'm ready for a rant!

Joe Manchin is an A-hole!

He's from my home state of WV and has a D. after his name, but he's not a Democrat with a capital D--his is a small d for dumb-a**.

From one of the poorest states in the country, he is blocking the passage of the Build Back Better bill that would provide West Virginians with more help than most states.

But at least he's said what he wants: to cut the price tag from 3.5 trillion over ten years to more like a single trillion.

Arizona's Kyrsten Sinema, democrat in name only is joining him but she won't say what she wants!!!

These two so-called Democrats could undo the whole Biden agenda and hurt many millions of people around the nation.

(Course Manchin gets lots of coal money and Sinema lots of pharmacy $--both of which would be affected by the environmental and drug pricing parts of the bill!!!)

What Idiots!

And that's the polite word....