intercourse it! it is too frakkin' hard!
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i don't care what i may have implied before - this unconditonal, Rilkean love is frakkin' hard!
when i want to say things like "no, listen to me" or "no, don't shut me out", i can't... i have to say what my 
wants me to say, and so i say "whatever you need"... and i mean it
but being loving is also scary, especially trying not to control... i don't like that part
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"The difference between me at five and me now is that at five Ididn't have much invested emotionally in the Universe being a certain way. Being 'wrong' never was a concern. It was all learning. Now I keep reminding myself: in science there is no such thing as a failed experiment. Learning that what I was testing simply does not work is actually a success." Will Arentz
"I have found that I find a particular excitement in suddenly realizing I don't know the answer to something. It's like coming to the edge of a clif in my mind. In this space of 'nothing' or not knowing, I get this intense feeling of anticipation. The reason I get excited is because I've come to the edge of what I know, and I realize that shortly an understanding will arrive in my head that will be staggering and will not have existed in me the moment before. it will be this huge ah-HA. I learned recently that an ah-ha stimulates the pleasure center of the brain. Evidently I'm addicted to this feeling." Mark Vicente
"Let's say a spaceship lands next to you on the coffee table (does size matter?) and inside is The Universal Book of Everything. And you get to ask one question. What is the question? ... And by now the Book is feeling a little depleted, and it got to be The Universal Book of Everything by asking questions of everyone, and getting real answers. So the question for you (the answer to which will be added in The Book) is : What is the One Thing you know for sure?" (from What The Bleep Do We Know, pg 2)
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On January 7, my friend, Kathy Wells, died. she was 53 years old, and has suffered from muscular dystrophy all the time i have known her, and yet that was not what killed her. kathy was out with friends, and either misunderstood or disregarded their instructions as to which way was clear, and rolled her motorized wheelchair into the path of an oncoming vehicle -- she was struck and killed. her memorial service was held at noon on Jan 14...
On January 10th at 5:30PM, Bryan, the young man of 12 i posted about, lost his battle with brain cancer. his parents and brother were with him when he died. to the last, he never complained, but always maintained that he was 'good'... his memorial service was held at 3:00PM on Jan 14...
you might notice this put both funerals on the same day, and relatively close to each other in time. since they were held at the same church, St. Mark's (Basking Ridge), and since we knew bryan's service would be well attended, donathan and i realized we would need to be at the second service at least 45 minutes early. now, kathy had not been at church in over 3 years, since she had to give up her home and move into a nursing home, and therefore a low turnout was expected for her service -- over 100 people showed up. there were very few of us present who had known her from her days at St. Mark's; most of the mourners had either known her from the very beginning of her life, or were recent friends from the nursing home. this was a wonderful thing, for we got to know parts of kathy that we had not known before as a result of the eulogies given. a hidden joy. regardless of circumstance.
kathy's funeral Mass ended at 1:30, and so donathan and i rushed off to grab a quick bite, to return to church at 2:15 for bryan's service. already there were 50 people there. by 2:30, the count was at 200, and there were 475 people as the service began, crammed into the chancel, the balcony, and standing wherever they could. fr rozzelle had been hit hard by this fight with death, and the fact that the healing he had prayed for did not occur in the way he wanted was a blow to him. his sermon struggled to come to terms with this, and he was left feeling that there were no answers except that the community pulled together for bryan and his family. but the eulogies of bryan's two godparents, an aunt and an uncle, showed that there was much more.
healing had occured, but not in the way everyone who had prayed for it might have hoped. most, i imagine, expected/desired/prayed for physical healing, for bryan's life to be spared. however, there was a much more important sort that took place -- there was healing of spirit and soul and family. my friend Jeff, bryan's older brother, had become estranged from his mom and dad because of a problem with substance abuse, and he had removed himself from the home and gone to live elsewhere, with his biological dad, to come to grips with his addiction. bryan's illness brougt him home and back to his parents. bryan also was able to keep his faith, and to have it grow ever deeper, so that he never once was afraid of what would come next, but always looked toward the future with unswerving anticipation. that is true healing. his spirit was kept whole, never crippled, and this allowed his parents to keep their faith, even though they sorely grieved. this is a true healing --- there are many things worse than death. and so again, joy, regardless of circumstance.
on tuesday, the 17th of January, which would have been my father's 79th birthday, we attended the wake of still another friend, a woman who was 87. her husband of over 60 years had passed away 3 years before, and we all thought Ginny would not survive her broken heart, but she did. in the end she died of the physical complications of Alzheimer's, without losing her mental faculties....
we are humans, and therefore death and disease, violence and mayhem are part of life. we cannot avoid them if we are to live. we can build walls, we can dig moats, we can shut ourselves off from every hint of danger or pain, but then we do not, cannot live. sometime you should read the lyrics to the Byrds' song "Mind Garden", which says it best.
there are worse things than death, and death is not that strong in the end. love is stronger than death, and so is joy...
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It used to be long letters daily
e- or snail-
It used to be many instant messages...
stolen time from work or home
It used to be phone calls at odd times
or even scheduled
It used to be that I would check e-mail
several times a day
to find you there
I still check -- voice-mail, too
"there are no new messages" -
Joy Sunday... the third Sunday in Advent... always i am struck by the juxtaposition of the Joy and Wonder of the Incarnation and Nativity against the tragedy and reality of the human condition. Four years ago, it was the Sunday of my first sermon... barely 3 months after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon... 3,000 people dead, the wife of one of the victims sitting in the front of the congregation, and i am to preach about Joy.... last year was the death of my father, and his memorial service was the day before Joy Sunday...
This year, Fr. Rozzelle called me the Thursday before and asked me to preach at the 8:00 AM service since the Sunday School was having their annual Christmas Pageant (also known as the Reign of Chaos) at the 10:00 service and there would be no sermon... his theory is that it is just as much work to prepare for one service as for two, and since he knows i am anxious to preach, why not let me do the work?
and so, Joy Sunday, i come prepared to preach on the paradox of the joy of Incarnation into the messy reality of humanity... i am ready to remind the congregation that this is an anniversay of sorts since it was 4 years ago that i preached my first sermon and it was to this 8:00 congregation, our four year anniversary... but Fr. Rozzelle greets me with the news that a young parishioner, a boy of 12, is losing his two-year battle with brain cancer and will probably die...
as at the first Christmas, where a 15 year old girl is pregnant, by someone other than her fiancé, in a society that will stone her to death - where is the joy in that? a man is faced with the reality of a fiancée, pregnant with someone else's child, in a society where lineage is everything, determines everything, including what prayers you are allowed to recite during sabbath ceremonies - where is the joy in that? a little boy comes into the world in poverty, with no clean hospital to check his health - where is the joy in that? planes are steered into buildings, killing 3,000 people - where is the joy? my father drops dead of a heart attack - where is the joy? one of my friends is in prison, possibly for a number of years, and will not celebrate Christmas with his family - where is the joy there? brian loses his battle with cancer and will probably die, and soon - where is the joy in that?
but joy is not dependent on circumstance. happiness needs things to go well, but not joy. part of the human condition is that bad things happen > children get sick, fathers die, misguided people destroy and maim, and joy comes, regardless. it is this that Jesus comes to teach us by his birth. he comes as an infant, in impoverished circumstance, to show that joy rises above circumstance. his birth takes place in the shadow of the cross - not many babies get funeral ointments for birth presents- and yet it is through that very cross that we will experience the incomparable joy of being loved by God so much that God gave God's only son for us!
and so as Christmas approaches, we should embrace this paradox of heavenly Joy and human reality, for it is the very gift of Christ. may we all work to bring this joy out into the world, ingnoring circumstance....
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ok, soooo much has been going on that i haven't had time to post anything in OMG 3 months!!! so... here's the flash....
in september we had the annual Open House at BGS, called "Expo 2005" and was it a success! it went so smoothly i wasn't sure it was my company! no out-of-stock issues, no theft, no real complaining... over 400 people attended over the 2 days, and the vendors really loved it! i even got to use it as an opportunity to turn some customers bitter with our largest vinyl supplier into big beacon fans, which was a v. good, v. lucky thing...
in october, i drove my mom up to buffalo for a china painters' convention (sorry > 'porcelain artists' is the current pc phrase, i believe)... it was the first convention she had been to without my dad, and it was also the first time i had been a captive audience of hers for more than 1/2 a day at a time... 8 hours to drive up, and she talked the entire time. it must be very hard for her to be so lonely. and all of her china painter friends at the convention kept coming up and saying how sad they were to hear about my dad and how much they missed seeing him there. that was difficult for both of us.... BUT the wednesday of that week was opening day for the NHL season!!!! and i did not miss it > went to see the buffalo sabres defeat the islanders, and it was sooooo good to see hockey again! exciting to see how an arena welcomes its fans and its team back... everyone was riding high... and since i went by myself, i was able to get really good seats behind the goal that the sabres attacked 2x -- no one bothered me, even in my devils' jersey, but i did get alot of guys calling me 'brodeur'... made for some good convo...
in buffalo i was able to walk to most of the places i was going, and that led me to St. Paul's, the Episcopal cathedral in buffalo. i met the canon of the cathedral, Ethan Cole, who celebrates one year of ordination to the priesthood this month. he was v. interested in my postulancy and had asked me to e-mail him and let him know how i prospered. i also met the vocational deacon, leann mc conchie, there and she is working on establishing an interfaith center for victims of domestic violence -- since 3 of my friends from st. mark's are ordained (or soon-to-be-ordained) interfaith ministers, i have put her in touch with them as a worship/healing service resource... nice to be able to network with clergy and feel accepted by them.
another thing that marked my time in buffalo was how many random people would come up to me and just start convos... along the waterfront, where i was walking wednesday morning after finding the hockey arena, i was snapping photos when someone said "be careful not to say 'watch the birdie' or you'll have a giant seagull fly in your face". looking up, i saw a little old man that looked remarkably like my dad (except for his face), with the same type of clothes, tee shirt, dockers, baseball cap... he was only 2 years older than my dad would have been, and so he and i talked about the buffalo river (the water we were on), the niagra river, and lake erie, and the 80 years of city history that he had seen. it was a shame, in a way, that i had to go back towards the hotel to attend noon Eucharist , because it was way cool talking to bill. he even said he hoped to see me again before i went home, but that never happened.
i also met another elderly gentleman, when i was sitting on a low wall waiting to go into the cathedral for Eucharist. again, he just came up to me and we started to talk. i learned all about his home parish, which was in another town about 20 minutes away, but how he loved to come to the cathedral to worship. and i met one of the painting teachers at the convention, a woman in her forties who is from brazil, but is only home for about 2 weeks out of every 3 months because she goes all over the world to teach china painting.
i did not get to do one of the main things i wanted to do in buffalo, which was to check out the music scene. Rk had told me that there is a lot that goes on, if you know where to look, but i did not get the chance. i also did not get the opportunity to walk around the section of the city that is supposed to be more like greenwich village, either, although i did have to detour through it one night, due to construction. i tell you, i could live in that city! i loved it that much. and i seemed to fit in seamlessly, for after the first day, folks would stop ME on the street to ask for directions.... lol
up until the last day, it had been in the high 80's to low 90's, but when we were driving home, a front moved in, autumn came, and summer was officially over. it dropped into the 60's, which was seasonal, but it meant misty rain as we set out. another 8 hours, with my mom still going strong talking, but i got her to listen to some of the jazz stuff i had brought (i had subjected her to metallica's s&m - the one with the symphony - on the way up), and the jazz made her cry... the cd that really got her was the most romantic cd ever made, imho -- John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman. she said it reminded her so much of what she and dad used to listen to and go dance to, which was what i thought she would think when she suggested it. sorry i made her cry, but glad i gave her a memory... by the time we got to binghampton, it was raining so hard, that i was having an...interesting...time driving, and after we came out of the delaware water gap, the rain was sheeting off the mountain onto the roadway like a shower. i was never so glad to get home in my life.
but i can't wait to go back to buffalo.
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if you have not read Sue Monk Kidd's book The Secret Life of Bees, i highly recommend that you do. one of the things that intrigued me the most is how some of her themes are positively Tollean...
"'How come if your favorite color is blue, you painted your house so pink?'
She laughed, 'That was May's doing. She was with me the day I went to the paint store to pick out the color. I had a nice tan color in mind, but May latched on to this sample called Carribean Pink. She said it made her feel like dancing a Spanish flamenco. I thought 'Well, this is the tackiest color I've ever seen, and we'll have half the town talking about us, but if it can lift May's heart like that, I guess she ought to live inside it.'
'All this time I figured you just liked pink, ' I said.
She laughed again. 'You know, some things don't matter that much, Lily. Like the color of a house. How big is that in the universal scheme of life? But lifting a person's heart--now that matters. The whole problem with people is--'
'They don't know what matters and what doesn't,' I said, filling in her sentence and feeling proud of myself for doing so.
'I was gonna say, The problem is they know what matters, but they don't choose it. You know how hard that is, Lily? I love May, but it was still so hard to choose Carribean Pink. The hardest thing on earth is choosing what matters.'
(The Secret Life of Bees pp 146-147)
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wow! an entire month since my last post....
my seven months of discernment has passed, and i am no longer at St. Peter's, but have returned to my home parish of St.Mark's, in Basking Ridge. although my last Sunday at St. Peter's was July 17th, i took the following Sunday off to spend with Ces and his family at another "cathedral" > shea stadium! the mets played well, and actually won; kris bensen pitched, so i got to see him in person, which was way cool. the highlight, however, was the dynamets dash, where all kids are allowed onto the outfield warning track, and let around the edge of the field to first base; the grass is protected by burlap, and they walk to first base, then they 'dash' all the way to home plate! becz it is only for kids, i was in a dilemma - i may be small, and may look a lot younger than i am, but no way can i pass for even a teenager... lucky for me, Ces' younger son was there and is still small enough for it to be believeable that he might need an adult with him , so i grabbed his hand (he shook me off at the first opportunity tho') and sprinted around the bases!
it was something, though, to be standing in the outfield at shea... when i walked thru the fence in center field (just to the left field side of the apple that pops up when a home run is hit) and stood there, looking at the stands, tears pricked my eyes... from the seats, you don't appreciate what it means for a stadium to hold 50,000 people, but from center field...... the grass stretches on forever it seems, and the seats are so small - you can imagine how it would look if they were filled. the fans are usually noisy at games, but to hear everyone yelling and cheering at once (like for a home run or good play or even a bad call) must be deafening...
the last time i felt like that was the first time i stepped on stage at Carnegie Hall - the bus had been early, and we had about 15mins before rehearsal (not held on stage), so i slipped away by myself and found my way onstage. the house lights were dimmed, and there were only a few backstage lights; you could see old tape on the stage floor, marks for past performers. walking to the edge of the stage, which is rimmed in lights (footlights!), and looking out over the empty seats, they seemed to soar above, edged in gilt (which you cannot see from inside the boxes)... i felt the presence of all those who had performed before my group, breathing encouragement and excitement into me... and here i was, going to sing and join that pantheon - no wonder that it brought tears to my eyes!
well, standing on the edges of shea was similar - what surprised me was how short the base paths seemed! of course, i was sprinting after my "son", and i still can run fairly fast (the workers guarding the infield were cheering me on!), but still, i didn't expect to reach home that quickly...
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