I got hearing aids today

When I got to the ear place, I purposely left my car radio where I had it driving there.

When I came out with my hearing aids, I had to turn it down several notches.

I can listen to TV with Bern at her sound level.

The woman who gave me the aids said that flushing the toilet would sound like Niagara Falls. And it does.

Everything is clearer.

My weak hearing is human voices.

I'll find out Sunday if I can hear all the announcements.

The hearing aids are set on low.

I go back next week to see if I need them pushed up higher.

I can do that with a button on the hearing aid.

With my hair, you can't tell I have them.

Today has been great.

We'll see what the future brings.

 

Josh's birthday

Today is our son's 47th birthday. I was 28 when he was born and Bern was 25.

We had finished up our educations before we had children.

Mimi was born 3 years later, when I was 31 and Bern was 28.

And that was that for us and children.

All these years later we have four grandchildren and a great deal of joy.

Cathy Chen, Josh's wife, was the daughter of two immigrants from Taiwan. Her father is a doctor. 

I asked on the phone if they were worried and Cathy said, "very".

Her parents have even invited her cousin and his family to come to Baltimore and live with them.

They haven't yet accepted.

That island is so troubled after Nancy Pelosi and another delegation have visited.

China wants it back.

Will the US defend them?

Who knows.

I ache for Cathy and her family.

 

A sermon from long ago

October 21, 2007

 

          Her name was Eliza. She was a tall and willowy and beautiful African American woman in her early thirties when I met her. She had three children then—a boy 12, a girl 10 and another girl 8. I never met their father, but I didn’t have to—they all looked just like Eliza, from their coffee with cream colored skin, their deep set brown eyes, their tall and angular bodies and their perpetual smiles.

          When I met Eliza she walked with an obviously painful limp and her fingers had lost much of their flexibility. By the time I left her—five short years later—she was confined to her bed and her body had started to curl back into itself. She had developed Progressive Relapsing Multiple Sclerosis—the most rare form of that debilitating disease, and the most difficult to treat.

          The first year or so of my time as Vicar of St. James in Charleston, West Virginia, Eliza was able to drive and she and the children were in church every Sunday that she didn’t have extreme weakness or pain that made it impossible for her to drive. Gradually, she moved from a limp to a walker to a wheel chair and finally, took to her bed. Her hospital bed was in the kitchen of their small house so she could direct food preparation by her children.

          Only once did I ask about her husband and what she told me was this, “he left after Tina was born and my MS was finally diagnosed. Tina was four or five by then, but Charles could see what the future held. He read up on my disease and then told me he had to leave. He just wasn’t ready to grow up the way his children have.”

          Then she smiled from her bed and said, “who could blame him? I’m not bitter….”

          And she wasn’t, not at all, not a bit, not even a tiny bit. Eliza wasn’t bitter.

          And her children had ‘grown up’ faster than any child should have to mature. They weren’t bitter either, though they could see what the future held for them. Charles, Jr. and Maggie, the older two, were committed to do whatever was necessary to care for their mother and stick around until Tina was old enough to care for herself.

          It sounds like a tragic, awful story, doesn’t it? A beautiful, young woman cut down in her prime; a marriage broken by pain and suffering; children having to grow up too soon?

          And it wasn’t that at all, not at all.

          In fact, when I was down and out, when I was depressed, when I was feeling sorry for myself—that’s when I’d visit Eliza and her children.

          And they would cheer me up.

 

          “How do you feel Eliza?” I’d ask.

          She would smile that 200-watt smile of hers and say, “Oh, places hurt I didn’t know I had places…and everything is alright…. If I could just get these babies to behave….”

          Then Charles, Jr. or Maggie or Tina would shake their heads and roll their eyes—which ever of them heard her say it—and reply, unleashing a smile as bright as Eliza’s, “oh, Mama, you’re the one who won’t behave….”

 

          Oh, don’t let me paint too pretty a picture about that little family. Life was hard for the children and for Eliza. Money was tight and the duties those kids had to serve their mother were demanding, odious, often heart-breaking. But when I was with them—no matter how self-centered and distracted I was—they actually cheered me up and sent me away a better person than the one who had knocked on their door.

          “I’m just like Jacob,” Eliza once told me, “but my Angel wasn’t satisfied with leaving me with just a limp….”

 

          Eliza read the Bible a lot and what she was referring to that day was the lesson we heard from Genesis this morning.

          Jacob is running away from his brother Esau, who Jacob had betrayed, when he encounters an Angel in the night and wrestles with that Angel until day-break. Jacob demands a blessing from the Angel—which he gets in the end, along with a new name—but the Angel also damaged Jacob’s hip so that he always, there after, walked with a limp.

          Encountering God in the dark spots of our lives, in the midnights of our existence, CAN result in being blessed and given a new name…but encountering God can also give us a limp.

 

          Someone—everyone argues about who really said it—someone once said, “that which does not kill us makes us stronger.”

          Our wounds, our pains, our sufferings do not ‘automatically’ make us stronger, but, in God’s grace, they CAN.

 

          That is the gift to us from Jacob and from Eliza—by ‘our wounds’ we can be healed. Our limps can make us walk with more determination, by God’s grace. Our brokenness can, through the love of God, make us “whole”.

 

          Life is most often not consistently “kind”. Bad hips and limps and brokenness are more often the norm of living. And there is this: IF CHRIST’S WOUNDS HEAL US, SO CAN OUR OWN.

          The choice God leaves us is between “bitterness” and “wholeness”.

          Jacob and Eliza chose “wholeness” as they limped through life.

          With God’s help, that is the choice we can make.

 

          So, I invite you—I sincerely, profoundly invite you—to bring your wounds, your brokenness, your limps to this Table today. Whether those pains are physical or emotional or spiritual—bring them to this Table today.

          There is a balm in Gilead…there truly is—that much, because I knew Eliza, I can promise you. Bring your pain and what may make you ‘bitter’ to the Table today.

          And chose “wholeness” to go with your limp.

                      

 

The GOP isn't so 'grand' these days

My father was a life-long Republican (as I'm sure I told you before) who wouldn't recognize his party today.

The many screams and shouts about Mara-lo-Go from MAGA folks have back-fired.

Even Fox News was telling Republicans to back off since what was discovered in the FBI raid might really be damaging.

Merrick Garland check-mated the former President (who only plays checkers!) and put him in a corner.

He didn't come out of it very well.

He claims he 'de-classified' the documents at his resort home, which a President can do. However, it requires a process and when has he ever 'followed the process'. Plus the agency involved has to approve.

What with New York and Georgia and the Jan. 6th committee and the FBI search, he's between a rock and a hard place, really wedged in.

We shall see what follows, but I can't help being a little delighted.

I know that's unkind of me.

But I own it.

Delight! Delight!

Let the Truth be known....

 

Sunday's Sermon

 

Sermon for Tenth Pentecost

        We’re a long way from last Sunday’s ‘don’t worry, be happy.”

        In today’s gospel lesson, Jesus says he’s come to ‘bring fire’ to the earth and wishes it were ‘already kindled.’

        That’s a long way from ‘don’t worry, little flock.’

        A very long way.

        But it is only 9 verses in Luke from last week’s gospel!

        I said last week that Luke’s Jesus was ‘compassion personified’. Not so today.

        Luke’s Jesus is also the most human Jesus in the four gospels. He can get angry when people don’t listen to his message or misinterpret what he is saying.

        “You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?”

        All the lessons for today are full of wrath and anger.

        In Isaiah, God destroys a vineyard God gave to his ‘beloved’.

        In the Psalm, another vineyard is destroyed by God.

        In the passage today from Hebrews, lots of horrible things happen. Listen to these few verses:

        “Others were tortured, refusing to accept release, in order to obtain a better resurrection. Others suffer mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned to death, they were sawn in two, they were killed by the sword; they went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, persecuted, tormented—of whom the world was not worthy.”

        I have problems with God in today’s readings.

        A few years ago, I wrote a manuscript about my parish priesthood called “Tend the Fire, Tell the Story, Pass the Wine”. In my life that’s what I’ve done as a priest—I tend the fire of faith, tell the story of Jesus and pass the wine of the Eucharist.

        We’ve been reading that manuscript on Wednesdays in the parish house. We just finished the last chapter called “God around the edges” in which I write my own creed.

        I’d like to share that with you now, with apologizes to those who already heard it. It expresses my personal faith and why God in today’s readings is not the one I believe in.

    CREEDO

I believe in the Edges of God.

Truly, that is my limit on the whole question of Creed.

 

I don't believe in God storming out of the clouds

and smiting me to smithereens if I am bad.

I don't believe in a God who would wake me up,

pin me to my bed and give me bleeding sores

on my palms and the top of my feet,

much less my side.

(Explain that to your general practitioner!)

I don't believe in a God who would instruct me

to slay infidels or displace peaceful people

so I can have a Motherland.

I don't believe in a God that has nothing better to do

besides visit bedrooms around the globe

uncovering (literally) illicit love.

I don't believe in a God who frets

about who wins the next election.

I don't believe in a God who believes in 'abomination'.

 

I believe in the edges of God--

the soft parts, the tender pieces--

the feathers and the fur of God.

 

I do believe in the ears of God,

which stick out—cartoon like—on the edges of God's Being.

I, myself, listen and listen

and then listen some more

for the Still, Small Voice.

I believe in God's nose—pronounced and distinctively

Jewish in my belief--

I smell trouble from time to time

and imagine God sniffs it out too.

The toenails and finger nails of God--

there is some protein I can hold onto,

if only tentatively.

 

Hair, there's something to believe in as well.

God's hair—full, luxurious, without need of jell or conditioner,

filling up the Temple, heaven, the whole universe!

I can believe in God's hair.

 

God's edges shine and blink and relect color.

God's edges are like the little brook,

flowing out of the woods beyond the tire swing,

in what used to be my grandmother's land.

God's edges are like the voices of old friends,

old lovers, people long gone but not forgotten.

God's edges are not sharp or angled.

The edges of God are well worn by practice

and prayer and forgotten possibilities

about to be remembered.

God's edges are the wrists of someone

you don't quite recall but can't ever remove from your heart.

 

God's edges are rimmed and circled

with bracelets of paradox and happenstance

and accidents with meaning.

 

God is edged with sunshine,

rainbows,

over-ripe, fallen apples, crushed beneath your feet

and the bees hovering around them.

 

God's edges hold storm clouds too--

the Storm of the Century coming fast,

tsunamis and tornadoes, spinning out of control.

 

Blood from God's hands—now there's an edge of God

to ponder, reach for, then snatch your hand away.

God bleeding is an astonishing thought.

God bleeding can help my unbelief.

 

And most, most of all,

the edges of God are God's tears.

Tears of frustration, longing, loss, deep pain,

profound joy, wonder and astonishment--

tears that heal and relieve and comfort...

and disturb the Cosmos.

 

That's what I believe in:

God's tears.

 

 

 

Time of silence to ponder God’s tears.