RSF and Lenten Penance

It’s no use, I can’t do it. As spiritual exercise, in recent years I developed my RSF&PTL habit of “right shoe first and praise the Lord,” putting on the right shoe first, preceded by the right sock if there’s a sock. Then the left. The rule that one ties the left shoe first doesn’t apply to me, because I seldom to never wear shoes with laces. Slip on or Velcro straps. Tie shoes sometimes for weddings, once in a while wear my comfortable brown SAS shoes with laces, but seldom, because I despise tying shoe laces. 

Which of course is fodder for psychiatric probing. 

RSF&PTL is purely a spiritual exercise that compels me to start my day, or interrupt my day if I’m re-donning shoes, with prayer. We list several kinds of prayer, this is praise prayer, and also an opportunity for thanksgiving prayer. It was deliberate, forced and obnoxious to institute, because my lifelong unconscious habit was to put on the left shoe first, so RSF was part of starting a personal prayer routine that otherwise was deficient. RSF is not the prayer, of course, but stirs the prayer, ignites the prayer. With few lapses, RSF&PTL has become conscious and automatic, and is offered, if not outright recommended, for anyone using Lent to begin a prayer habit. The Jewish origin is well testified online, here’s a simple one:  

http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/260661/jewish/The-Laws-of-Using-The-Right-Side.htm

But what I cannot keep is the maxim to don trousers right leg first. I’ve tried. It doesn’t work for me, won’t work for me, whether I’m standing or sitting. If standing, putting on pants right leg first oddly stirs a balance issue, and at this age I’m not eager to fall. If sitting, some defiance arises. Either way, the disobedience of going left leg first reminds me that I am a sinner, apropos for Lent.

Also for Lent, contemplating the kuriositas site’s visit to skellig michael and placing myself there. For escape, for beauty, for barren, stark, ascetic chill, and as penance: 

http://www.kuriositas.com/2011/03/skellig-michael-mysterious-monastery-in.html

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V and the Number 9

Insipid, bland, weak, wishy-washy. Bit too cool in here, raise the temp in the thermostat so the heater comes on. Up at two o’clock, but it wasn’t two, it was three due to going back on CDT. How do I know? Atomic clock says so. Blaming the Vernal time change, some will miss church. Always having to find someone to blame, the inability to take the blame for one's mistakes, is a symptom of narcissistic personality disorder.

RSF&PTL putting on slip-ons to go outside for Linda’s PCNH. Back porch thermometer reads exactly 50F but the morning feels chill and damp. Paper’s not to be seen, hiding in shadows cast on the concrete driveway by streetlamp and palm trees, shadows as effective as any camouflage. Sky is winterish overcast, though a lone star winks off to the east. 

This is not meant to be lyrical, just straight.

Devilish loss of balance in turning, whether quickly or slowly. Distressing, oddly the balance continues to turn causing loss of control and uncheckable fall, happened three times lately. It's Vertigo with aging, different from dizziness that comes upon rising too quickly bringing on a drop in bp. Dandelion. 

Into a teacup: three tablespoons baked beans left over from supper, splash darkest maple syrup, 39 seconds in the microwave. Mug of black coffee. Why 39 seconds? Some study said the numeral 9 could be omitted from the microwave oven keypad, because 9 is never used. Knowing how I would feel if nobody ever needed me, I make an effort to use 9 frequently so it doesn’t get its feelings hurt.

Sunday school this morning. Gospel reading is Matthew’s account of Jesus after his baptism, being driven out into the desert for forty days in the wilderness and being tempted by the devil. It doesn't say what he was driven in, so that's up for imagination. I used to visualize a Lincoln Town Car, but now realizing the roads weren't paved, I'm saying a Jeep Wrangler. Mark reports the event with a couple of verses. Elsewhere and later, lifting from Sayings Gospel Q, first Matthew and then Luke record a conversational confrontation between Satan and Jesus. Who’s this Satan being? The demon of aging. 

Today’s post is sponsored by the Letters C, D, T and V, and by the Number 9.

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... and a hank of hair

A Rag and a Bone and a Hank of Hair

or 

Cremains is a Four-Letter Word

“A rag and a bone and a hank of hair” is how I once heard Pete, Linda’s father, refer to himself. Pete died December 1970, at age 65, in Phoenix, Arizona, and is buried in a cemetery there. Linda’s mother died three decades later, August 2001, 90 years old, in Tallahassee. We four, Linda, Kristen, Paint and I, were there housesitting while Tass and Jeremy were in England. Soon after, Linda and I took her ashes (don’t cremains me) to Phoenix and buried her urn in the plot with Pete. It was late 2001, just after 9/11 when we rode out on AmTrak, our favorite way to travel. Entrain (!) at Tallahassee or Chipley, Sunset Limited to New Orleans, layover a few hours, back on at suppertime and overnight to Tucson, pick up a Hertz car, a Lincoln Towncar with 75 miles on it, and north to Phoenix. A cherished memory.

We made it a week or ten day vacation with much reminiscing around Scottsdale, Cave Creek, Carefree and the surrounding area, where Linda’s parents had moved in 1965 while we were stationed in Japan. We first visited there upon returning from Japan in 1966, and many times after that, especially when we were stationed in San Diego 1969-1971. Arizona memories are part of what we are. Memorable and permanent. Permanent?

Which is what’s on mind this morning: what we are. A rag and a bone and a hank of hair. But this isn’t me, isn’t really me, it’s not who I am! What will be of me after my death? Not what will become of me?, what will be of me? What am I? Not some catechetical rubbish: what am I really? 

I’m Visible and Invisible. Visible is the bone and hank of hair sans rag that will be reduced to ashes (not cremains, a ghastly, funereal obscenity masquerading in a black suit and dark glasses as undertakers’ euphemispeak) a day or so after my death, and scattered here and there in accord with my wishes. BTW, if my wishes are not accorded honor, the same horrifying anathemas apply that doom anyone who uses the Rite Two burial office at my funeral. Losing the Visible may be something of a relief, because, among other nonevents, it will no longer be "don't eat that" or stepping on a scale to hear “tch tch tch” from some medical presence keeping records. The hair and bone are not really part of me. As in virtual reality. But what will there be to enjoy the relief?

Invisible is the part of me that is real. More unique than DNA, unique as my fingerprints or a snowflake. Unique memories, dreams and hopes, loves, knowledge, belief, skepticism, certainties (μὴ γένοιτο), thoughts and longings that only I can have and hold and feel, and only I can know. Seeing it’s Lent, I’ll also confess: there are regrets and repentances, mostly without penance -- my priest would shudder at the grunge he whisks away every time he waves the sign of the cross over me in absolution. General Confession and Absolution is great theology because of what washes privately, quietly and anonymously down the drain, cleansing the Invisible.

Every time I officiate a funeral I wonder what was lost. Does brilliance evaporate? Bill's brilliance, is it just gone? And all his knowledge and goodness and generosity: lost like an erased hard drive? In my lifetime I’ve known a few people with so-called photographic memory. One was Warren, with whom I grew up, 1st grade at Cove School through graduation from Bay High. Warren was the smartest and always did the hardest and most challenging and best thing. When we were required to memorize a poem at Cove School, he stood up and recited “If” by Rudyard Kipling: 

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too:

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,

Or being hated don't give way to hating,

And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream---and not make dreams your master;

If you can think---and not make thoughts your aim,

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same:.

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

And stoop and build'em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings,

And never breathe a word about your loss:

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with Kings---nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

If all men count with you, but none too much:

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,

And---which is more---you'll be a Man, my son! 

If, by Rudyard Kipling

Warren died the night of our first Cove School Class of 1949 reunion years ago. I know about the Visible, but the Invisible, where is that, whatever became of the real Warren? 

The other was George, my closest friend and confidant through our Apalachicola years. A Sewanee graduate, he never forgot one thing he had read, studied, seen, or been told. A couple years after I retired from parish ministry, we returned to Trinity, Apalachicola and I assisted Fr. Joe with George’s funeral. Fr. Joe talked about an onion, peeling back layer after layer after layer of Being, and likening that to George’s immense and astonishing intellect and knowledge. I will never stop missing George, what a crater he left behind. Whatever happened to all that he knew and remembered and was? Is all that gone, just gone, even the body of knowledge that was uniquely him? 

And me! My memories and knowledge and all this stored up being: any less a dream than Jay's future with Daisy? If not, perhaps I am not afterall. Whatever will become of my memory of the Jamestown Ferry crossing Narragansett Bay on a cool Saturday morning late in September 1957? My image of a tiny girl toddling proudly toward me on her first birthday, moments after my ship returned from sea, it's as clear as the images on the computer screen in front of me, where will that be stored and enjoyed and relished in ages to come? What will happen to all this pent up Bible knowledge that I seem so eager to share?

And what ...

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Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936). Verse: 1885–1918. 1922.

The Vampire

1897

A FOOL there was and he made his prayer

(Even as you and I!)

To a rag and a bone and a hank of hair

(We called her the woman who did not care)

But the fool he called her his lady fair—

(Even as you and I!)

Oh, the years we waste and the tears we waste

And the work of our head and hand

Belong to the woman who did not know

(And now we know that she never could know)

And did not understand!

A fool there was and his goods he spent

(Even as you and I!)

Honour and faith and a sure intent

(And it wasn’t the least what the lady meant)

But a fool must follow his natural bent

(Even as you and I!)

Oh, the toil we lost and the spoil we lost

And the excellent things we planned

Belong to the woman who didn’t know why

(And now we know that she never knew why)

And did not understand!

The fool was stripped to his foolish hide

(Even as you and I!)

Which she might have seen when she threw him aside—

(But it isn’t on record the lady tried)

So some of him lived but the most of him died—

(Even as you and I!)

“And it isn’t the shame and it isn’t the blame

That stings like a white hot brand—

It’s coming to know that she never knew why

(Seeing, at last, she could never know why)

And never could understand!”

Something To Chew On

OK, it wanders off religious, doesn't it. Anu Garg's word this morning is "manducate" which is a verb meaning "to chew" from Latin "mandare" meaning "to chew." The etymology goes naturally to mandible, and to masticate -- which I visualize as someone salivating disgustingly while chewing a bite of rare steak, or a goat chewing on a mouthful of hay that's sticking out of both sides of its mouth -- but interestingly enough (there's that expression again, that gives the clue that it's not going to be interesting at all but the most boring thing ever read) -- Garg says, interestingly enough, that the Latin word mandare, "to chew," stretches out to "manger." 

So, where does the mind go with this? I only know one manger, the one back there in Bethlehem in which newborn Jesus was laid after the BVM wrapped him in swaddling cloths. Was the Star shining? No, that was Matthew, wasn't it, the manger belongs to Luke. The manger was not likely a wooden structure out in the stable as we often visualize in our creche, but a hollowed out stone feeding trough 

in the lower part of a house in ancient Palestine, the space where the family kept their animals, their sheep and goats, at night. The couple that in due course would come to be revered as The Holy Family were lodged there because there was no space for them in the guestroom. The manger was where the animals chewed their food, hay, grain, whatever they chewed on. I don't much like this, because it's the wrong music for "Away in a Manger" and changing the tune of "O Little Town of Bethlehem," and making Christmas more earthy than heilige, thanks a lot, Anu. But then, seek the truth, come whence it may, cost what it will, eh? I don't think so.

The man?  I have no idea. Is that you, Anu?

W

    

Double space

Still not accustomed to this hp laptop with Windows 8.1, but working on it. My task for this morning is to draft our worship bulletin booklet for Sunday, March 16 and email it in. Why put that in my blog post? Because it's 7:35 and I'm here looking out on a damp, rainish morning with the breeze coming up somewhat briskly over St. Andrews Bay, coffee finished. Today was supposed to be rainy, but the iTitan display indicates the rain will be done for us by mid-morning, although it doesn't look good for whoever is at Disney today. It was a good night, porch door open, rousing to semi-conscious several times to hear rainfall, slightly cool. Alphabet computer is skipping two spaces instead of one  space nearly every blasted time I hit  the  space  bar. How do I  adjust that sensitivity?  

Yesterday was my best sample yet  of  why I'm glad no longer to be rector, vicar, priest in charge, senior pastor, ... Up early, three church services, preach one, lead Bible study, home fairly exhausted. It was a one-day reminder of how twenty-five years  ago  I felt  at  the end of Lent and Holy Week, after  church on Easter afternoon. A priest I worked with in the early 1980s once told me that  he'd never want to be bishop, that the best job in the church is cathedral dean, all the  prestige and glory  but everybody else, including junior  clergy doing all the work. He  was  wrong, the  best job in the church is retired helping out  as priest associate. And that ain't  no  bull.

Anybody who's getting weary of  reading text with all the gardenia double-spacing can quit reading. I know whereof I speak, because  I'm getting bloody tired of it and  so quitting typing.

W

Sackcloth and Ashes

 42F and rainy but drizzling not raining at my house. Rain was pouring just after midnight when we opened the door to the upstairs screen porch to enjoy the great sleeping weather. However, to keep the heater from running and the damp chill from filling the rest of the upstairs, we close the door between the bedroom and the hall. When I get up later I close the porch door.

Ash Wednesday. Ashes and Holy Communion at church several times today. 7:30 this morning no sermon. 11:30 noon no sermon, but we are having our regular Bible study with light lunch after. This evening, I don’t remember what time. Fourteen years ago when I went to be the rector at Grace Church, they started every evening event at 5:45 to make it easy for everyone to remember, and I think they still do.

Ashes? Its origin as church tradition is lost to history but ashes and sackcloth is biblical as a sign of repentance for sin, or to signify misery. We come to church this first day of Lent and the priest smudges ashes on our foreheads and says, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” In my growing up years the Roman Catholics did it but we did not. It came to the Episcopal Church liturgically with the 1976 introduction of the revised Book of Common Prayer. 

OK, I see. http://holy-nativity.org/ . Our HNEC website says the evening service is 6:00 p.m. Music, sermon, choir.

Most people seem to keep their ashes on all day to signify. To me, that is disobedient to the gospel for the day, Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21 where Jesus says don't be like the Pharisees who dirty their faces to show everyone their piety. "WASH YOUR FACE" Jesus says. 

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Pax Anyway

Mishmash 

Do I have confidence, confidence in our government? OK, I’m working on it. Governments are intent on “saving face,” no government wants to “lose face.” Russia takes foreseeable and inevitable steps within their sphere of influence to protect Russians and Russian social, economic and military interests in Crimea after the new Ukraine government shows a glimpse of its axx of radical nationalism by outlawing the Russian language (before reversing itself), and the American government falls all over itself threatening Russia and starting diplomatic and economic action that can have no other effect than to bolster Russian resolve and prevent the Russian government from backing down to American threats, and I’m supposed to have confidence? What I’m having is not confidence but second thoughts. 

On the other hand, gobbledegook is alive and well. International news this morning: “The aim of the conference, is to review the progress of ongoing activities and projects at units under Maintenance Command and evolve strategies and maintenance plans to tackle maintenance issues arising out of induction of new technology and weapon systems in IAF." Translation? "We have some new missiles and need to figure out how to keep them from rusting."

National Pancake Day, here in Panama City anyway. We’ll have pancakes for supper at church tonight. What’s the big idea? Shrove Tuesday. Shrove sounds like the name of a neighborhood or village or such as in Shrove Corners or Walnut Shrove Baptist Church, but it isn’t. In a language where “v” and “b” are indistinguishable sounds, Shrove is a word etymologically related to, e.g., schreibe , German for “write.” Stretching that out to “You confessed your sins and were shriven of them, the priest wrote them off with a bit of penance.” So, you are shrove for Lent, been through your refrigerator and got rid of all the butter and sweets -- by using them to make pancakes, on which you will gorge yourself the day before (Shrove Tuesday) Lent begins (Ash Wednesday).

PCNH obits this morning include Edythe MacLeod, widow of the Rev. Don MacLeod. Don was born in New York (Yonkers as I recall) but raised in Scotland and in the Kirk, and never let his Scottish brogue fade. Many of us, self included, remember Edythe and Father Don fondly. I am not clear on when to use Scot, when Scottish, and when Scotch. But Fr. Don was.

Pax

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