To say goodbye

This past weekend I attended a service at the beautiful Trinity Episcopal Church in Ambler, PA, to say goodbye to a cousin of mine.  Andrea was an inspiration to everyone who met her, a selfless social worker who worked tirelessly on behalf of others, loved by her family of course but also beloved in her community and at her church.

The large sanctuary filled up with her friends and relatives mourning her passage, but sure she was in a peaceful place befitting her life's work.  Her son read a poem evocative of her life:

Do not stand at my grave and weep
I am not there. I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning's hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry;
I am not there. I did not die. 

Mary Elizabeth Frye

She was laid to rest in a quiet corner of the churchyard.  She will be greatly missed by all.

Until seventy times seven

Happy Easter Jimmy Rogers. I love you.

Moreover if thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone: if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother. Matthew 18:15.

Happy Easter Johnny. I love you.

Then came Peter to him, and said, Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven times? Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven. Matthew 18:21-22.

Happy Easter Daniel Wilson Lamberton. I love you.

Shouldest not thou also have had compassion on thy fellowservant, even as I had pity on thee? Matthew 18:33.

Greetings.

At church on Sunday the priest, John, discussed the reading from Luke 1:26-38, where Mary hears from the angel Gabriel that she would bear the Son of God.  First John warmed the congregation up by telling an uplifting story about an obese woman who discovered running and ran her first triathlon.

She was on the third leg, laboring mightily and running near the very back of the pack when an octogenarian man caught up with her.  They ran together for awhile and the woman expressed her fear to him that when he ran on, she would be the final finisher.  What a way for her first triathlon to end, she said bitterly, coming in dead last.  What would people say about her then?

The man said simply, "They'll say you're a triathlete."  The church audience murmured appreciatively at the story.

Then John launched into his sermon.  "What were the angel's first words to Mary?" he asked.

"'Greetings, favored one!'  Greetings!  Not something from on high like, 'Listen now to God's command' no, a more friendly opening that would show Mary that her beauty, both within and without, came from God and was indicative of His love for us all."

There was more to the sermon, of course, but I was already in a reverie about the two stories.  Dead last.  Greetings.

After the service, as is customary, John spoke briefly with each parishioner as he or she filed out.  When my turn came, I considered telling him my associations with both of his parables.  John is not a runner, and being at least a dozen years younger than me, he didn't come into manhood during the Vietnam era.

Looking at the serious priest looking earnestly into my eyes, I decided against telling him that another thing that persons might call the overweight triathlete coming in last is "DFL."

No, I went with telling him that the association I thought about when the angel Gabriel opened with Mary by saying," Greetings," was that when letters from the selective service arrived telling you that you were being drafted, they started out famously with "Greetings."  You're a favored one who is going off to Vietnam for a tour of duty!

John looked at me severely and said sternly, "That was the association you made from that passage?"  Uh, yeah.

You Can Go Home Again

By the end of next month, the breakaway parishioners at the historic Falls Church Episcopal Church in my home town will have to vacate the valuable structures belonging to the Episcopal Church that this rump congregation has been occupying for years and turn the venerable sanctuary back over to the Episcopalians they turned out of the premises in 2006. These squatting "Anglicans," homophobes and misogynists (in my opinion), will be required to fend for themselves, just like they forced the local "continuing Episcopalians" to do for years when the worshippers found sanctuary in the loft of the Presbyterian Church down the street in which to conduct services.

I had long ago stopped going to the Falls Church after listening to some of the disturbing sermons of the charismatic rector, John Yates. This mesmerizing man who led the defection of many of the parishioners from the Episcopal Church preached male dominance, anti-gay bias and pious family-value elitism under the guise of the true, nay, the only, word.

The ordination of an openly-gay bishop in New Hampshire by the Episcopalians this century was something the priest just couldn't get past so he and his enfatuated followers engineered a takeover of the church property in 2006 and aligned themselves with a rogue Nigerian bishop who advocated long prison terms for homosexuals and, for all I know, suitable harsh biblical punishments for other "sinners."

The town Episcopalians however persevered for years in cramped loft space within a sympathetic Protestant church, teaching tolerance, forgiveness and inclusion in a true Christian fashion, and I rejoined the fold as their services now aligned with what I believe in, having learned the compassionate way as a boy at the loving services I attended at St. Paul's Episcopal Church on Staten Island. The courts having finally handed us our property back, worth many millions of dollars (no wonder the defectors tried to take it when they left the church), we are going home again next month.

Trevor's OK

On this day before Memorial Day, the priest of my congregation mentioned in her sermon that we should consider the homeless around us as many of them are veterans who have come home to difficult circumstances, whether it is because of PTS Disorder or suffering from Agent Orange exposure or being wrongly discharged from the Army due to a mental illness designation after suffering from Traumatic Brain Disorder due to a close-by powerful IED explosion. You see them everywhere in our warlike society if you look, often on street corners begging for dollars.

At church today I gave thanks for the successful passage out of six hours of spinal surgery on Monday by a former running buddy of mine, the strength I found to deal with two hours of successful stomach surgery on Wednesday, the sacrifices of my father and three uncles who all answered the call in WW2, the ultimate sacrifice in Afghanistan last fall of a former running acquaintance and the sacrifices of all those nameless service members who keep us safe. I thought of Trevor, about whom I have posted before, on his traffic corner wearing his sign, "Combat Veteran, Always Faithful."

I parked nearby and walked up upon him after church, noting that he was watching me closely as I approached. He knows me and calls me "Lawyer."

After giving him five dollar coins, I spent about twenty minutes with him on his street corner as he spoke animatedly. He is a powerful man who has a habit of emphasizing his points by flicking out backhand taps to your body.

I was gratified to listen to him explain that he has reduced his prescribed narcotic pain medication intake from his service-related disability from over a hundred a month to about thirty. "You know I also take mood medication," he added, which apparently in conjunction with his powerful pain medication gives him unpredictable emotional swings.

Keeping my hands discretely in front of my four-day old surgery incision in position to ward off any inadvertent taps to my stomach, I discussed his health, rehabilitation and future with him. Rolling Thunder is in town per usual this Memorial Day weekend, and he apparently took his buddies from the 82d Airborne Division out on the town last night.

Then he tired of chatting with me and chased me away by saying he had to "make some money" from passing motorists on his street corner before the day was done. In fact, beyond my five dollars, he had collected only a single dollar in all the time I was speaking with him.

We shook hands repeatedly as I took my leave from him. I wish him continued wellness, this representative of America's huge and faceless homeless population.

Easter thoughts

I'm just back from attending my first Easter Sunday service since I was a boy. My sister says that if you're returning to the church after a long absence, and hence are unfamiliar with its rituals, you shouldn't start with an Easter service, the superbowl of the Christian year as she puts it.

There's some validity to that, but I wanted to attend today because my congregation was saying a special prayer for my Uncle Harry, who passed away ten days ago, and I wanted to be there for that. He was the very last of his generation, the greatest generation, still with us, having been preceded by my father, Uncle Bill, mother, Aunt Dare, Uncle Bob, Aunt Johnnie and Aunt Betty.

I miss them all. My father was put ashore on Okinawa on Easter Sunday in 1945, a Marine combatant in the last land battle in WW2 that claimed 50,000 American casualties.

Other than that, and the fact that at least one Easter Sunday fell on my birthday, Easter hadn't held much attraction for me until recently when I started attending church again after many years. This morning I internally said my final goodbyes to my Uncle Harry and all of his generation, reflected upon the resurrection and listened closely to the sermon, which prominently featured Mary Magdalene's experience at Christ's tomb as revealed in John's gospel.

A Dark Passage to Light

He plunged into the dark, cold water and drifted easily downward while he considered the situation. He was in a canal filled with water that was over his head and he must be near the bottom now.

His lower hand reached out and touched the mud at the bottom. It was time to go to the surface now but he didn't want to suddenly thrust up in the water and get his feet mired in the muck.

He rolled over and tried to orientate himself so that he could propel himself upwards without having to kick out behind him. Although he was relaxed, it was definitely time to get to the surface.

But the coldness of the water and the slow turning of his body had disoriented him and he was suddenly acutely aware that he had only a single breath of air. An urgent note of finality characterized his actions.

He felt that he had only one chance to attain the surface now. He hoped that he was pointed upwards because he didn't want to dive headfirst into the bottom mud and have to wrestle around down there getting reoriented while his single breath waned.

He pushed off and his eyes opened to light and he sucked in a breath. The dim luminescence of dawn was filling his bedroom.

He lay under the sheet considering. He'd been dreaming, and perhaps a little bit of acute sleep apnea was involved.

His dream sequence was eerily similar to being trapped under the boat in the rapids last month. He remembered that when he'd described his near-death experience then to his sister afterwards, she'd used the word reborn to characterize his escape.

He thought about the dark, lonely place under the boat, with nothing but fluid surrounding him in his confined space. Then he had pushed off downwards to launch his journey into the unknown, which he feared might lead to him being pinned by the current against the rock that the capsized raft was wrapped around.

But there had been no other choice then because it was time to leave, and he had traveled under the stern of the boat and come out into light and air, before being plunged down the rapids in a wild ride where he had to fight for his life. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed.

This Is The Way?

On Sunday I attended a church service for the first time in a long time. I went to a 5 pm service at an Episcopal church in the District. In a subsequent post I’ll tell you why, and about the delightful effect it had upon me. In this post I’m gonna tell you about the Episcopal church in my home town of Falls Church, Virginia.

I grew up attending St. Paul’s Episcopal Church on Staten Island. I felt safe, secure and welcome in that wonderful old church on St. Paul’s Avenue, not far from the ferry in St. George.

As a result, when I was growing up my religion lived within my heart, and was expressed by my best attempts to do good deeds. I knew the Lord to be loving and forgiving, and I tried to be the same. This included being tolerant.

That was the memory and knowledge I had of my faith, until I moved to Falls Church. There I attended services at The Falls Church (Episcopal) so that my children could be exposed to the church and its teachings. I wanted each of them to make up his own mind about what kind of a presence it would have in his life.

I never felt at ease in The Falls Church, nor entirely welcome. Everything was so severe. I listened to the sermons and in my opinion, they were intolerant, sexist, misogynistic and homophobic.

Principally they preached against homosexual unions being condoned by the faith and spoke disapprovingly about wanton or empowered women. The flock was usually directed to that day’s particular anti-gay tract, which could be purchased in the church’s bookstore.

The preachers I was listening to didn’t compare to Father Cope on Staten Island, whom I had trusted and loved as a boy. I didn’t trust and couldn’t love what I was now hearing.

One of my sons, the most sensitive one, uttered a curse word in frustration while attending Sunday School once. The teacher chastised him in front of the class for committing a sin and made him sit alone in repentance for the rest of the hour, apart from but in full view of the rest of the class. My young son’s lips apparently trembled the whole time. The thought of my child’s public ordeal at the hands of an adult still tortures me years later.

I obviously stopped going to this church and I wondered about my faith. Was it intolerant of persons who were different? Or did it have room for all, as I remembered it.

More recently, during my interminable divorce proceedings, the teen minister at The Falls Church, who had undertaken on his own to counsel my estranged sixteen-year old son, came to the custody trial and testified against me. Maybe I was too liberal and too tolerant for his taste. I guess this youth minister preferred that my sons have no father.

Unsurprisingly, I was awarded full joint legal custody with standard visitation after the two-day trial. The Guardian-Ad-Litem ("GAL"), the court-appointed overseer of our sons' best interests, was familiar with the Reverend Jeff Taylor's counseling of my son. The GAL addressed the Court, and his final report was incorporated en toto into the Final Custody Order. He gave my support of the other parent an A+, and her support of me to the kids an F. He said the following about this fine representative of the clergy of The Falls Church:

"I don't really think he was providing counseling in the way of an unbiased person. He was the friend. He was the father of Jimmy's best friend and I think he sort of heard his situation. But I didn’t hear in his counseling any themes of forgiveness. I didn’t hear any themes of honoring your mother and your father. I didn’t hear the things that I thought a truly unbiased counselor would be presenting."

Recently a majority of members of The Falls Church who were given ballots voted to leave the Anglican Church over their displeasure with the consecration of a gay bishop and the blessing of same-sex unions. These purists have cast their lot with a Nigerian Archbishop who has voiced support for a pending law in Nigeria that provides prison sentences for homosexual activity. Meanwhile the Archdiocese of Virginia has filed a lawsuit to get the parishes’ land and buildings back.

You might wonder why I would ever set foot in an Episcopalian Church again. I had a good reason.