Is February half over already?

It's midway through February already, closer to spring than to fall, practically halfway to income tax day.  I've been trying to stay busy, continuing my routine of running three times a week, albeit at reduced milage due to the limiting factors of a balky achilles and an aching arthritic hip. The mostly 50 degree-plus weather has been an inducement to get out there and enjoy the day on a pleasant jog which is more like a shuffle than a run these days but still, ten months ago I wasn't running at all.

I believed my eye woes were finally behind me with the coming of the new year, but this month I thought that my good eye might be starting to suffer the same malady as my bad, right eye.  I imagined I was seeing what I call "fly-bys," a feeling or glimpse that something small, like a fly, was whizzing past the periphery of my vision, and feared that the floating junk in my left eye was increasing.  These are the ominous warning signs that your retina may be deteriorating and it can lead to a hole in your vision which is a real and immediate medical emergency.  Also I just felt that my vision was subtly degrading because it seemed harder to see my footfalls during runs in low or flat light conditions.  So I called for an appointment with an ophthalmologist and within a few days had both of my eyes checked out.  The verdict?  My good eye, the left one, was fine although I was at a "greater risk" than the normal population for its retina to deteriorate because it had already happened to my other eye.  But in my bad eye, the subject of all those operations a year ago, I had developed scar tissue that was attached to the plastic lens inserted during my cataract surgery last April, that was obscuring my vision in that eye, a "one in five" occurrence I was told, which seems like a high rate of failure or at least significant side effects for such a commonly performed operation to me.  After four eye surgeries in the recent past, two of them emergency operations that led in each instance to an onerous week of "face-down" recovery, no movement of the head permitted, I am scheduled for an "office procedure" later this month involving lasering the scar tissue inside my eye to blast it away, from which I supposedly will drive myself home following it.  Supposedly it is a safe procedure which will improve the vision in that already-damaged eye, which carries only a "theoretical risk" of burning a hole in the retina if the laser beam is errant as a possible side effect (I asked).  I'm glad I went to the doc but I'm not happy about this development.

I've also been attending different churches this month as I like to sample a few different religious services each year.  I attended a service at the Washington National Cathedral, a renowned ornate Episcopal church in the District that suffered extensive damage to its spires and gargoyle statues during the big earthquake that shook DC last decade.  I attended the service, involving much singing and several baptismal, with a congregation member who showed me around the beautiful interior afterwards.  I attended a service at the Falls Church Anglican, a mega church whose congregation years ago took over my church, the Falls Church Episcopal.  That congregation, under the leadership of its charismatic priest who in my opinion was homophobic and misogynistic, opposed to gay bishops and women priests, purged the rolls of parishioners who were liberal and followed a Nigerian bishop with those biases instead of the Virginia diocese.  In effect they squatted on the church property for years while a lawsuit to reclaim the property by its rightful owners finally prevailed about seven years later and the illegal usurpers had to leave the property and build its own church.  I usually attend one service there a year to see what they're preaching these days, and their new church was finally completed this year.  The service was the last one I will attend there as their metamorphosis seems to be complete and the congregants seemed a little too in rapture for me.  There was a soft rock religious band that played hymns and psalms throughout the service, projecting their image and the lyrics on two huge TV screens and the congregation swayed to the music throughout and sang along, many raising and waving their hands to the heavens in supplication as they asked Jesus to save them and be their friend.  There was no communion, although the sweet-talking priest did talk about Anna Karenina during his sermon, which I found interesting.

Other than that, I donated double red blood cells last week, which wiped out my running vitality for the next run, my century and a quarter blood donation.  This month I have watched the rapid, perhaps fatal, decline of our great republic as the president spins out of control, enabled by a slender majority of Republican Senators representing about 20% of the US population.  Today I spent a wonderful Valentine's Day with a special friend, visiting a distillery, enjoying a bowl of mussels and seeing the Academy Award winning movie Parasite with her.  President's Day is this weekend and two of my sons have birthdays this month and maybe I'll see either or both of them at the local gourmet pizzeria during one or more of those lunch hours.  And this month also has one more day than usual, it being a leap year.

Goodbye.

I go to church twelve times a year, whether I need to or not.  Some of my friends think this orderly regime is funny, others think it is indicative of how I think.

This year I went to church thirteen times, as in today, because there was so much to speak to the Lord about currently.  I also contribute to the collection plate (of course) and add a dollar coin (as a token) for whomever I am  thinking about, troubled about or hopeful about currently.

Today was a record, perhaps by multiples, for the token donations, ten one-dollar coins, for my thoughts on persons or concepts.  After communion, I prayed on my knees in church for each person(s) or concept that each coin represented.

In no particular order, my prayers were for (i) a friend who was terminally ill, (ii) all relatives abroad for their eventual safe passage home, (iii) my estranged children, (iv) the one wife thereby that I know about (welcome to the family!), (v) the USA (do you wonder why?), (vi) illness stricken people in my family, (vii) a family member who currently needs prayers, (viii) my own heart for hardening against a person who should be close to me were I more understanding, patient and compassionate, (ix) a hopeful next year (this embarrassingly might be the same as praying for myself), and (x) a blessing upon the marriage and moving on of a friend of mine.  When I got home from church, I learned that the gravely ill friend of mine had passed and was obviously with the Lord.

Palm Sunday

Yesterday was a full day.  I attended church and we conducted the early part of the service in the frigid cold outside before retiring inside after receiving a palm shoot, where we listened to readers reading a biblical passion passage in lieu of listening to a sermon.

Then I went home and disposed of a pile of Susan G. Komen Race For The Cure t-shirts I found on a shelf in my closet.  This outfit is merely a political anti-woman's choice campaign and not an actual charitable cause (I used to do a lot of these races before I discovered the organization's true purpose) so I slit the logo on each shirt, rendering it unwearable, and dropped the pile into the charity clothing bin nearby so the material can be sold by weight as mere rags.

After that I ran a virtual 5K race on the W&OD Trail behind my house, in simulation of a real race on the trail later that day that I was going to be absent for but which I had been running every year since my return to running in 2011, when I had sixty extra pounds to lose.  I ran the 3.1 miles hard and finished in 25:57, huffing and puffing in the biting morning air.

To cool down after the run I walked around the 'hood and saw to my chagrin that a neighbor's house is for sale, owned by a man in his late sixties who has lived in the house since the early seventies but can no longer afford the property tax in Falls Church of over $7,000 annually on his snug but small workman's home, in addition to storm water fees, an impervious surface fee, inspection fees and decal fees that amount to many hundreds more each year.  The Little City's war on seniors; I'll be following him out of town after I retire when I won't be able to afford on my diminished income the avaricious, always-growing local taxation.

Memorial Day 3K

I ran in my city's Memorial Day 3K fun run yesterday morning, a low-key race I often participate in.  It's flat and fast and free, and you get a T-shirt at the end.

This year my church had a contingent of parishioners run in the race wearing distinctive T-shirts extolling its mission.  It has been struggling to rebuild its membership following the defection of its former chief priest with a majority of the congregation under his charismatic sway to a homophobic, misogynistic sect, taking the entire church property worth tens of millions with them! 

It took six years of litigation by the Episcopalian diocese to evict these squatters, which finally happened last year following years of lonely worship in the loft of a church across the street by a core of local believers in the church's obligation to be inclusive rather than exclusive in its message of love.  The lengthy enforced separation from its historic and rightful property decimated the church's local congregation base but didn't destroy its message of true faith.

We followed the lead in the race yesterday of the newly arrived chief priest who issued a challenge to any church member who was his age or older of buying a beverage of choice at the local pub for anyone who beat him.  He might have re-hydrated there after the race, but he didn't spot a beverage for anyone else.

As soon as I showed up before the race I could see in his attire and his build that he was a runner.  It's hard to spot that otherwise when the only time I normally see him he's in a shapeless flowing robe, showing nothing and hiding all.  (Above:  Reverend John is on the left, next to the only parishioner who beat him in the 3K run.)

Plus he was being largely uncommunicative before the race.  I recognized the attitude from my salad days of racing last decade--friendly but focused on the upcoming task.

The gun sounded and off we went.  The priest took the lead of the church's congregation amongst the first wave of racers and never looked back,  I didn't see him again after the first minute.

I was running a race in isolation because there was no way I could keep up with the priest and except for a younger parishioner who was hanging with him (and beat him), I was faster than the rest of the congregation members who were there in their distinctive T-shirts (I think).  I started off steadily at a swift enough pace for me these days, glad that I had jogged the mile from my house to the starting point thus infusing my blood with oxygen already in my exertions.  (Above:  Pre-race.)

Round the first four corners we went as the race stretched out from its jammed, pell-mell start to a more ordered series of groups of runners running at the same pace.  As we approached the final turn slightly past the halfway point onto the long last straightaway to the finish, my watch read eight minutes.  Although I was tiring and people were steadily starting to pass me, I was hanging in there. 

The city blocks of the long last stretch were interminable but the raucous crowd support was nice.  We passed the Catholic church then the new high rise unit then the library and there was the final signal light just before the end less than a block away.  I glanced at my watch and it showed 14:40, with a little effort I could break fifteen minutes.

I bestirred myself and finally stanched the steady flow of runners passing by me.  I hit the finish line at 14:55, an 8:00 pace, happy with my effort and my race. 

Father John had finished a minute and a half ahead of me.  When I saw him shortly later, he hardly looked bushed at all.

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.

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.