Fr Arnold

In my email this morning is a notice that calls to mind an awareness that we live into and through a season and then all of a sudden we realize it's history, part of our past:

With sadness, we report that former Interim Rector of Holy Nativity, the Rev. Arnold Bush, died on January 10, 2020. 

Arnold arrived as Interim Rector in January 2003 and brought relief, smiles, happy faces, happiness itself, the happiness that is the experience of love, back into our parish. As nearly all parishes do at some time in life, ours had been going through a rough period that those of us who were there and cannot forget, or worse, worst, will not forget, a time we call The Troubles. From April 2000 until January 2003, Linda and I had been away at Grace Church PCB where I was Interim Rector for awhile, and then at St Andrew's Episcopal, returning home to Holy Nativity on Arnold's first Sunday. Looking at the calendar and reconstructing events, it would have been Sunday, January 19, 2003. 

Recognizing me in the congregation, he stopped me after church, we chatted, and Linda and I invited him to have supper with us at our home that evening. He came alone, Zoe was home at their cottage on Choctawhatchee Bay near Niceville, Valparaiso, where before retiring, Arnold had served as rector of St Jude's Episcopal Church. Meeting in church that morning, and our meal together that evening, began a happy working relationship for the next year and a half, and a warm friendship that only ended last Friday when Arnold died. 

Arnold was happiness itself, smiles without end amen. He was a character. His Monday morning staff meetings could go all morning and did so. His vestry meetings lasted hours upon hours. Arnold that first evening asked me to come on HNEC staff and help him. In church Sunday mornings, once we realized what was about to happen again as Arnold set up a music stand in the center aisle at sermon time, those of us sitting behind the Altar under the Jesus figure (which is where it was at the time) looked at each other knowingly and checked our watches. Ray Wishart was often one of us, called where we were sitting "under Jesus' armpit", which was so. Arnold's sermons were like the Gloria Patri, "world without end". They went on and on and on, But we loved Arnold, and it was okay. In advance he printed copies of his sermon outline, and (I don't recall) it was either tucked into the worship bulletin so you could follow along with him, or available on a table by the door as you entered church for worship.

Arnold's tenure with us was my second time serving Holy Nativity as "priest associate", a title which simply meant (and still means today) that as a retired priest, I help the rector in any way he needs that requires an ordained priest. I was on the preaching schedule to give him relief. I filled in as "supply priest" when he was away, including summers, when he and Zoe took extended vacations. Loving Arnold, everyone nevertheless groaned, at least inwardly, as he set up the music stand after the gospel every Sunday morning and began his sermon. When I told him, "Arnold your sermons are way too long, you're losing your audience, you need to not talk so long" he laughed loudly and said, "That's the same thing Zoe tells me!" and nothing changed. 

Sometime in 2003 someone asked Arnold something about EfM*, Episcopal program of theological education by extension, and Arnold heard me mention that I had once been an EfM mentor for several years. Arnold immediately told me he wanted me to start an EfM seminar group at Holy Nativity. I resisted, but found it useless to say NO to Arnold, because he never gave up; and I started an EfM group that for years met in my classroom at Holy Nativity School, then moved to the school library, then the church library, eventually expanded to three groups, then two at HNEC, one at St Andrews Episcopal and one at St Thomas Laguna Beach, all that I mentored for years until fall 2010 when my heart issue rose and I had to turn all the groups over to Ray Wishart, who had recently become my co-mentor, and whom I subsequently recruited into the Episcopal clergy. 

In August 2004 I was asked to be priest at St Thomas by the Sea, Laguna Beach, left Arnold at Holy Nativity, and was at StThomas nearly five years, through April 2009. But when Arnold arrived at HNEC in Jan 2003, I had been serving as school chaplain and religion teacher at HNES since the previous HNEC rector left, and had long been on HNES school board and school foundation board, and continued all that; so even after leaving HNEC I still worked with Arnold some. Our relationship was always far warmer than simply cordial. 

What is still in my mind this morning, is Arnold's obliviousness to time, the passing of time. For Arnold, Time was simply the Present, which never passed. Which, though his sermons seemed unending, was part of his Being. That Sunday evening seventeen years ago when he came to our house for supper was a delightful visit. But a couple of hours into it, and as we were eating supper, the phone rang and from Tallahassee either Jeremy or our daughter Tass told Linda that her water had broken and she and Jeremy were on the way to the hospital. Tass has been my One since we found out Linda was pregnant in 1971, and I panicked and said we need to get over there right now. But Arnold talked and ate and we finished supper and beyond my saying every time he paused for breath, "Well we really need to leave now and get on over to Tallahassee now", Arnold talked and talked on and on and on as long seconds ticked by and my anxiety rose. Eventually, about nine o'clock, the evening came to a close. Along with Arnold, Linda and I carried our suitcase out, closed and locked the door and got in our car as Arnold got in his car to return to Choctawhatchee Bay. 

We sped to Tallahassee only to spend hours in the waiting area until Jeremy came out in the wee hours of Monday, January 20, 2003 and told us Caroline is here. She's named for me, Carroll, and she'll be seventeen this coming Monday. And she's very special. 

That Sunday evening in our home was a wonderful visit with Arnold Bush, helped establish our happy working relationship as colleagues, and was always a friendship of the lovingkindness that was Arnold's very personality.

Go with God, Arnold.

Tom

EfM Education for Ministry

If you have a favorite picture, it doesn't need to be related to your text. Osprey diving for a fish. Action shot by dear friend Arthur Reedie.