... and morning, a day: two things, and three.
Couple of things in mind as darkness gives way to dawn this early Thursday here in my office/study/den at 7H. Come to think of it, two things, and three.
The room is small, just about big enough for the 9x12 rug we bought at Gayfers Home Store in 1984 for the living room of the rectory at Trinity Church upon arriving in Apalachicola from Pennsylvania. It took Tass and Linda a while to get used to leaving Pennsylvania; but Florida and I was home at last, home at last, thank God Almighty, home at last after all those years away. The rug moved with us to the Old Place when I retired from parish ministry in 1998, and was in the dining room, then rolled up and stuck away on an outside screen porch after a plumbing break that poured down through the ceiling. Having an ancient family house was Old Times Sake but constant. Though we had the rug cleaned several times, a spot remained and is still faint. On arriving at 7H we had the rug in the dining room, turning it around after I tipped over a full goblet of red wine. Rearranging after Cat5 Hurricane Michael, we intended to lay it in our bedroom but forgot that on the day the movers were here, and it's here in my O/S/Den. However, the rug was not the first thing.
At any rate, the second thing is about the room. Long years ago, sometime after WW2 my parents bought from an antique shop, a chest of drawers that had been in an officer's stateroom in a ship. Maybe a warship, might have been a merchant ship, IDK, I think my parents told me at the time, I don't recall. Painted white, it was used in the kitchen at the Old Place all my years remembering. In or about 2002 and 2003, we had the middle of the Old Place torn out and added a three room center acrossways, kitchen, "gathering room" for art and pictures and for company to gather instead of crowding the kitchen, and a bedroom bathroom closet suite for my mother. Fond of the old chest, I took it down to bare wood, found it was quite nice oak, so refinished it that way; had a piece of marble cut for the top; at The Cottage, found and bought an antique English oak breakfront that sits perfectly atop the marble.
Part of the memory is that day at The Cottage, I saw my HNES students Richard Youd and Ella Catherine in the office. Griffin was there, and maybe Jase. The Cottage is a family thing, I met the owners and we talked about their car habit of driving Chevrolet Suburbans. We had a new Tahoe at the time, so I'm thinking the year was 2002.
Anyway, I sit here in O/S/Den contemplating the modest rearrangement to accommodate the oak chest and breakfront.
The first thing is a line from Wendell Berry that I read somewhere recently, that struck a note deep in my heart for many reasons:
“I don’t believe that grief passes away. It has its time and place forever. More time is added to it; it becomes a story within a story. But grief and griever alike endure.” — Wendell Berry, “Jayber Crow,” 2000
My years have encountered many instances of grief, most of them vocational as minister with congregation, and closer with friends, family. A few are deeply personal, starting at my age 11, the death of Mom, my beloved grandmother. Berry is right, it's still there in Time, and if I stop I can call it all back up, including the tears and the ache in throat and chest that I first experienced that afternoon in January 1947. A friend pointed out recently that even without the loved one's presence in the world, we will always have the memories of love, and the stories. Reading the quotation from W Berry stirred all that.
The third thing is thoughts in reading our Old Testament lesson for the upcoming Sunday. It's an all time OT favorite for many people, including the Professor Nelson who taught Old Testament at my seminary, also, as I recall, Homiletics, which is preaching. I liked him, enjoyed his class. Probably my youngest professor, he may have been about my age at the Time. One day after class he kept me back and told me that he and other faculty knew I'm an Episcopalian, the only one in the class and school, the first in their memory; but that they wanted me to know I'd be welcomed if I considered moving to the Lutheran Church. I think that my declination, explaining to him that I would be the eighth or ninth Episcopal priest in my family, that the Episcopal Church is my dearest heritage, and that I could not possibly change, stirred a change in our relationship. Before a summer not long after, I went to his office and asked if, over the summer, he would tutor me in Hebrew, which he also taught, and he was almost abrupt in declining. But our Michah reading:
Micah 6:1-8
Hear what the Lord says:
Rise, plead your case before the mountains,
and let the hills hear your voice.
Hear, you mountains, the controversy of the Lord,
and you enduring foundations of the earth;
for the Lord has a controversy with his people,
and he will contend with Israel.
“O my people, what have I done to you?
In what have I wearied you? Answer me!
For I brought you up from the land of Egypt,
and redeemed you from the house of slavery;
and I sent before you Moses,
Aaron, and Miriam.
O my people, remember now what King Balak of Moab devised,
what Balaam son of Beor answered him,
and what happened from Shittim to Gilgal,
that you may know the saving acts of the Lord.”
“With what shall I come before the Lord,
and bow myself before God on high?
Shall I come before him with burnt-offerings,
with calves a year old?
Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,
with tens of thousands of rivers of oil?
Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression,
the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?”
He has told you, O mortal, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?
A couple of thoughts stirred in my mind as I read this. First is how important is to God, his memory of leading Israel out of bondage in Egypt into the Promised Land, keeping, really, not only his promise to Moses, but centrally his covenant with Abraham. In his oracles, God remembers that act quite often, his central adventure of bringing about Israel's salvation (one of the lines in my seminary theology professor's answer to Who or What is God: God is Whoever or Whatever led Israel out of Egypt) and always, God is offended, sometimes enraged, but always deeply hurt, that Israel forgets again and again and again. God has with us, profound and deeply painful experiences of our ingratitude, bringing grief to God, grieving the Holy Spirit.
The other memory that stirs is of a Sunday School session one day in Apalachicola, when a member of the class, who to this day is a treasured friend, said that the greatest sin is ingratitude. That has stuck with me. In Heilsgeschichte, their Holy History with God, God's people Israel are constantly ungrateful, and God is constantly taken aback and hurt. Sometimes turns vengeful and wreaks judgment. But I've found it too, in life, in my Time. Things I did for and with church members, parishioners, in our Time together, often at substantial sacrifice, which later I knew how God had felt when a parishioner or parishioners whom I had loved and helped in situations of their great pain, sorrow, need, grief, later turned against me, and I suffered the painful experience of ingratitude. Not often, but it's part of life for every minister, stirring our own grief of sorts. In my own relationships, both with people and with God, I try to remember and guard against ingratitude. Not always successfully, but "you were always on my mind".
Long, I reckon too long. But it's my blog and I write these posts as mental exercise, along with the solitaire card games I play online, and the Sudoku puzzles I work when Linda buys a PCNH, and the Hebrew I'm still trying to teach myself, and the sermons I write and preach, and the Bible study and research I do both for personal fun and to get ready for Sunday School class. The blog is for myself alone. If anyone enjoys loving or hating me because of what I blog, that's a bonus in my PlusTime.
T+
Breakfast.
The room is small, just about big enough for the 9x12 rug we bought at Gayfers Home Store in 1984 for the living room of the rectory at Trinity Church upon arriving in Apalachicola from Pennsylvania. It took Tass and Linda a while to get used to leaving Pennsylvania; but Florida and I was home at last, home at last, thank God Almighty, home at last after all those years away. The rug moved with us to the Old Place when I retired from parish ministry in 1998, and was in the dining room, then rolled up and stuck away on an outside screen porch after a plumbing break that poured down through the ceiling. Having an ancient family house was Old Times Sake but constant. Though we had the rug cleaned several times, a spot remained and is still faint. On arriving at 7H we had the rug in the dining room, turning it around after I tipped over a full goblet of red wine. Rearranging after Cat5 Hurricane Michael, we intended to lay it in our bedroom but forgot that on the day the movers were here, and it's here in my O/S/Den. However, the rug was not the first thing.
At any rate, the second thing is about the room. Long years ago, sometime after WW2 my parents bought from an antique shop, a chest of drawers that had been in an officer's stateroom in a ship. Maybe a warship, might have been a merchant ship, IDK, I think my parents told me at the time, I don't recall. Painted white, it was used in the kitchen at the Old Place all my years remembering. In or about 2002 and 2003, we had the middle of the Old Place torn out and added a three room center acrossways, kitchen, "gathering room" for art and pictures and for company to gather instead of crowding the kitchen, and a bedroom bathroom closet suite for my mother. Fond of the old chest, I took it down to bare wood, found it was quite nice oak, so refinished it that way; had a piece of marble cut for the top; at The Cottage, found and bought an antique English oak breakfront that sits perfectly atop the marble.
Part of the memory is that day at The Cottage, I saw my HNES students Richard Youd and Ella Catherine in the office. Griffin was there, and maybe Jase. The Cottage is a family thing, I met the owners and we talked about their car habit of driving Chevrolet Suburbans. We had a new Tahoe at the time, so I'm thinking the year was 2002.
Anyway, I sit here in O/S/Den contemplating the modest rearrangement to accommodate the oak chest and breakfront.
The first thing is a line from Wendell Berry that I read somewhere recently, that struck a note deep in my heart for many reasons:
“I don’t believe that grief passes away. It has its time and place forever. More time is added to it; it becomes a story within a story. But grief and griever alike endure.” — Wendell Berry, “Jayber Crow,” 2000
My years have encountered many instances of grief, most of them vocational as minister with congregation, and closer with friends, family. A few are deeply personal, starting at my age 11, the death of Mom, my beloved grandmother. Berry is right, it's still there in Time, and if I stop I can call it all back up, including the tears and the ache in throat and chest that I first experienced that afternoon in January 1947. A friend pointed out recently that even without the loved one's presence in the world, we will always have the memories of love, and the stories. Reading the quotation from W Berry stirred all that.
The third thing is thoughts in reading our Old Testament lesson for the upcoming Sunday. It's an all time OT favorite for many people, including the Professor Nelson who taught Old Testament at my seminary, also, as I recall, Homiletics, which is preaching. I liked him, enjoyed his class. Probably my youngest professor, he may have been about my age at the Time. One day after class he kept me back and told me that he and other faculty knew I'm an Episcopalian, the only one in the class and school, the first in their memory; but that they wanted me to know I'd be welcomed if I considered moving to the Lutheran Church. I think that my declination, explaining to him that I would be the eighth or ninth Episcopal priest in my family, that the Episcopal Church is my dearest heritage, and that I could not possibly change, stirred a change in our relationship. Before a summer not long after, I went to his office and asked if, over the summer, he would tutor me in Hebrew, which he also taught, and he was almost abrupt in declining. But our Michah reading:
Micah 6:1-8
Hear what the Lord says:
Rise, plead your case before the mountains,
and let the hills hear your voice.
Hear, you mountains, the controversy of the Lord,
and you enduring foundations of the earth;
for the Lord has a controversy with his people,
and he will contend with Israel.
“O my people, what have I done to you?
In what have I wearied you? Answer me!
For I brought you up from the land of Egypt,
and redeemed you from the house of slavery;
and I sent before you Moses,
Aaron, and Miriam.
O my people, remember now what King Balak of Moab devised,
what Balaam son of Beor answered him,
and what happened from Shittim to Gilgal,
that you may know the saving acts of the Lord.”
“With what shall I come before the Lord,
and bow myself before God on high?
Shall I come before him with burnt-offerings,
with calves a year old?
Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,
with tens of thousands of rivers of oil?
Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression,
the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?”
He has told you, O mortal, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?
A couple of thoughts stirred in my mind as I read this. First is how important is to God, his memory of leading Israel out of bondage in Egypt into the Promised Land, keeping, really, not only his promise to Moses, but centrally his covenant with Abraham. In his oracles, God remembers that act quite often, his central adventure of bringing about Israel's salvation (one of the lines in my seminary theology professor's answer to Who or What is God: God is Whoever or Whatever led Israel out of Egypt) and always, God is offended, sometimes enraged, but always deeply hurt, that Israel forgets again and again and again. God has with us, profound and deeply painful experiences of our ingratitude, bringing grief to God, grieving the Holy Spirit.
The other memory that stirs is of a Sunday School session one day in Apalachicola, when a member of the class, who to this day is a treasured friend, said that the greatest sin is ingratitude. That has stuck with me. In Heilsgeschichte, their Holy History with God, God's people Israel are constantly ungrateful, and God is constantly taken aback and hurt. Sometimes turns vengeful and wreaks judgment. But I've found it too, in life, in my Time. Things I did for and with church members, parishioners, in our Time together, often at substantial sacrifice, which later I knew how God had felt when a parishioner or parishioners whom I had loved and helped in situations of their great pain, sorrow, need, grief, later turned against me, and I suffered the painful experience of ingratitude. Not often, but it's part of life for every minister, stirring our own grief of sorts. In my own relationships, both with people and with God, I try to remember and guard against ingratitude. Not always successfully, but "you were always on my mind".
Long, I reckon too long. But it's my blog and I write these posts as mental exercise, along with the solitaire card games I play online, and the Sudoku puzzles I work when Linda buys a PCNH, and the Hebrew I'm still trying to teach myself, and the sermons I write and preach, and the Bible study and research I do both for personal fun and to get ready for Sunday School class. The blog is for myself alone. If anyone enjoys loving or hating me because of what I blog, that's a bonus in my PlusTime.
T+
Breakfast.