Category: Family (Page 7 of 15)

A Share in All that Happens – From the Daily Office – June 10, 2014

June 10, 2014 / eric / 0 Comments

From Ecclesiastes:

There is a vanity that takes place on earth, that there are righteous people who are treated according to the conduct of the wicked, and there are wicked people who are treated according to the conduct of the righteous. I said that this also is vanity. So I commend enjoyment, for there is nothing better for people under the sun than to eat, and drink, and enjoy themselves, for this will go with them in their toil through the days of life that God gives them under the sun.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Ecclesiastes 8:14-15 (NRSV) – June 10, 2014)

Cane Back Dining Chair My stepfather was a good man with faults. That is probably a description that could apply to millions of people, probably most people — good with faults. Whether he would be classed by Qoheleth as “righteous” or as “wicked” — or perhaps somewhere in between — I have no idea. What I do know is that he enjoyed himself.

Most of my life as his stepson he worked as a tool-and-die man. In later life, he and a neighbor together invented an emergency chlorine gas shut-off system for municipal water chlorination systems. There was a market for this device and their company made a good deal of money, which they plowed right back into the business. My stepsister, my brother’s children, and I received a monthly stipend from the company for five years when, in accord with the stockholders’ agreement, we sold his interest to the other shareholders at his death.

He was always doing something. Gardening, restoring old furniture, “flipping” houses (I would swear my parents invented flipping!), making jewelry. If there was ever anybody in my life who followed the advice in Ecclesiastes to “eat, and drink, and enjoy [yourself],” it was my stepfather.

We now have some of the furniture he restored in our home, including a cane-back chair in our dining room. Several weeks ago I started writing a poem about that chair and, as it developed, it turned into a sonnet. However, I couldn’t finish it. I couldn’t come up with the final couplet. Today, the lines wrote themselves as I was reading the Daily Office.

I don’t know what, if anything, it has to do with today’s lessons . . . but it’s where my thoughts are, so it’s what I’ll record here. I think I’ll title this Veils Unveil:

The caning on the chair is beginning to come undone,
the caning my stepfather did; yes, you know the one.
We put it in the dining room about a year ago
and no one ever uses it; it’s only there for show.

Truth be told, the dining room is seldom ever used.
It’s where we did our taxes, and often leave our shoes.
The cats sit on that old chair and watch the world go by;
they look out through the caning and I often wonder why.

Standing in the kitchen, and looking through the door,
I’m looking through that caning, like a cat, and seeing more
than grass and plants and rocks and things, and passing automobiles.
What unhindered vision blocks, the veil of caning clear reveals.

Imagination and remembrance, hidden meaning all around,
Veils unveil and shadows light; lost memories are found.

Qoheleth can be depressing! Later in today’s lesson he writes of the dead, “Their love and their hate and their envy have already perished; never again will they have any share in all that happens under the sun.” But I don’t believe that’s so! My stepfather’s handiwork sits in my dining room and I remember him fondly when I see it, when I look through the caning on the back of that chair. Just as the preacher admonished, “whatever his hand found to do, he did with his might,” and through that restored old antique chair, he still has a “share in all that happens” in our family life. And in that, I think, is a reminder of the Christian hope and promise that (as The Book of Common Prayer asserts) we will be “reunited with those who have gone before.” (Burial of the Dead, Rite Two, page 493)

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Father Funston is the rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio.

Strong and Courageous – From the Daily Office – June 2, 2014

June 2, 2014 / eric / 3 Comments

From the Book of Joshua:

I hereby command you: Be strong and courageous; do not be frightened or dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Joshua 1:9 (NRSV) – June 2, 2014)

Suffragettes Marching These are among the words spoken by Yahweh to Joshua son of Nun, the assistant to Moses, as he is commissioned to succeed Moses as leader of the Hebrews and lead them into Canaan.

It occurred to me as I thought about them that they can mean very different things depending on the audience to whom they are spoken, or at least they can seem to. It also occurred to me that although there are similar admonitions given to various people throughout Scripture, none of those people are women. There are women who are lauded for their strength and courage, Deborah the judge and Yael who killed the general Sisera, for example, but they are exceptions to the rule (the Scriptural rule seeming to be that women are to be meek and compliant). But I can think of no instance in which a woman is directly instructed to be “strong and courageous” (or anything similar).

I suppose my thoughts run in that channel this morning because of something I heard during an NPR discussion of the recent mass killing in Isla Vista, California, the motivations of the killer, and the public conversation in the aftermath. Two news analysts were talking about the Twitter hashtag #yesallwomen and one of them quoted novelist Margaret Atwood, “Men’s greatest fear is that women will laugh at them, while women’s greatest fear is that men will kill them.” I’d not heard that comment before, but a look at that Twitter hashtag feed made me appreciate the truth that underlies it.

Reading the various Tweets from women under that hashtag is a real eye-opener! Here are a few (edited to remove Twitter identifiers and vulgarities):

Because I thought I was safe walking 2 blocks home in my town ’til rape reports started piling up last year. I wasn’t safe; I was lucky.

Because this is “humor”: Never trust anything that can bleed for seven days straight and doesn’t die.

Because I was recently told by a man that I was “forcing him to have impure thoughts” by the way I was dressed.

Because I’m made out to be a slut for being a single mother.

Because when I’m walking home at night, instead of self-reflection or self-improvement I think about self-defense.

Because when I walk through a parking lot and get catcalled I’m told to ignore it rather than standup for myself.

Because when my intellect stuns someone, attacking my weight is an obvious second choice.

Because when women share stories of being scared or hurt, some people say “Yeah? Prove it.”

Because when you hit on me, my curves are sexy, and when I reject you, I’m a fat bitch you’d only ____ with a paper bag on.

Because I was advised by a male supervisor to flirt with men to get them to sign a petition.

Because when a guy posts a post-workout pic he’s “confident” but when a girl does the same thing she’s “attention-seeking”.

The other eye-openers on that hashtag thread were the Tweets by men. I simply can’t repeat many of them here! To call them misogynistic would be an understatement; to call them vile would be closer to the truth.

As the child of a single mother and the parent of a single woman living on her own, I thought I appreciated the difficulties of women in our society. I was wrong. I didn’t and I probably still don’t, but what I took away from reading through those Tweets is a more visceral (if still partial) understanding of patriarchy. Those Tweets flesh-out and give substance to what, for most men (I think), can be nothing more than an intellectual concept. I suggest my brethren do as I have done and spend some time reading through those Tweets. You’ll be amazed by the comments of the women and appalled by those of the men. You’ll have to be strong and courageous to read them, but in the end you’ll be better for having done so.

So God told Joshua, “Be strong and courageous,” but I can think of no instance when God gave similar instruction to a woman. It occurs to me that perhaps the reason those words aren’t spoken to women in the Scriptures is that they don’t need to be. Women don’t need to be told to be strong and courageous; they already are. Women growing up and living in patriarchy simply have to be.

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Father Funston is the rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio.

The Monday of a Three-Day Weekend – From the Daily Office – May 30, 2014

May 26, 2014 / eric / 1 Comment

From the Book of Leviticus:

They shall compute with the purchaser the total from the year when they sold themselves to the alien until the jubilee year; the price of the sale shall be applied to the number of years: the time they were with the owner shall be rated as the time of a hired laborer.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Leviticus 25:50 (NRSV) – May 26, 2014)

Today is Memorial Day according to the calendar: in my mind, it’s really not, it’s just the Monday “holiday” that replaced Memorial Day which ought to be on Friday of this week. Yes, in that regard, I’m a traditionalist; I don’t hold with the change made by Federal law back when I was in college, a change that moved Memorial Day and a couple of other significant civil holidays (Washington’s birthday, for example) from their real dates to a variable Monday, creating “three-day weekends”.

As a student, of course, I thought that creating three-day weekends was a great idea, but as I’ve grown older I think back to fond memories of May 30th Memorial Days with my mother tending my father’s grave, days that were a disruption in the normal flow of everyday life, days that jarred us into awareness, days that forced us to recollect his military service and the sacrifices he and his comrades had made. The Monday of a three-day weekend doesn’t do that.

We have lost something, and what I think it is is the dissonance of that interruption and awareness that it brings. When Memorial Day fell whenever it would, forcing us in the middle of the week to take time from work and school or on a Saturday disrupting our weekend gardening or sporting events, we took notice. The Monday of a three-day weekend doesn’t do that.

The Episcopal Church doesn’t have special lessons for the commemoration of Memorial Day; this is a secular holiday, not a religious one. So when we sit down to offer our prayers in formal worship on this day this year we have three choices: the Daily Office lessons for Monday in the sixth week of Easter; the daily Eucharistic lectionary; or the lessons for the commemoration of St. Augustine of Canterbury. (In another year on another date, these options would change.) None of these offer anything one could count as particularly appropriate to the day, but I am struck by how grossly inappropriate the Levitical discussion of slavery and the redemption of slaves is . . . grossly inappropriate and yet very instructive.

One cannot deny that the Bible approves of slavery, however that evil may be embodied in a culture. Although slavery as practiced by the Hebrews was different from that of the Roman Empire and both were very different from that practiced in the American South before the Civil War, Holy Scripture was easily used to justify an inhumane practice. What was ignored in American slavery was the Bible’s insistence that slaves be treated fairly, that they or their kin be able to redeem them, and that the price of redemption be just. That’s what today’s Old Testament reading is all about, setting a redemption price that would be just and equitable.

I suppose, if I were more of a historian, my meditations on the relationship between this text and Memorial Day might have focused on the fact that the holiday’s historical origins are found in the aftermath of the American Civil War and the abolition of slavery in this country. There might be some appropriate and instructive linkage between this discussion of a reasonable price to free a slave and the horribly unreasonable cost of thousands of soldiers’ lives to free the American slaves. But I’m not that much of a historian and my initial thoughts on reading the text were more personal: I remembered those Memorial Days with Mom at my father’s grave, those special disruptions in our day-to-day lives and I wondered about the cost of moving the holiday from a set date to a variable Monday.

It seems to me that, in one sense, the alteration in the holiday has exacted too high a price and in another has cheapened the remembrance. The high price paid is in our forgetfulness and its consequences. That the day has become just another Monday of a three-day weekend, a day for gardening and sporting events and picnics, helps us to forget — or more accurately, encourages us to not remember — the horrors of war and the sacrifices of those who fight, are wounded, and die. Forgetting — or not remembering — the unjust and inequitable price of past wars, we are more willing to send our young men and women into another one.

The change also cheapens our loved ones’ loss. My father was badly wounded in France in World War II: shrapnel nearly destroyed his right leg. Surgeons were able to save it and, after more than a year of rehabilitation and therapy, he was able to walk, but I never knew him not to walk without a painful and pronounced limp. I suspect that that pain was one reason he drank to excess, self-medicating himself into numbness, oblivion, and eventually an early death; another was probably what he witnessed around him on the battlefield. A day of remembrance barging into and making a mess of our daily lives is not a high price to pay to remember the sacrifice he made and the larger sacrifices made by those who died in battle. The Monday of a three-day weekend doesn’t do that. It’s too easy; it’s cheap. And to me, the son of veteran who paid much too high a price, it’s offensive.

The Law of Moses may have approved of slavery, but it didn’t cheapen human lives. It insisted that the price of a human being be justly and equitably determined. The Monday of a three-day weekend doesn’t do that.

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Father Funston is the rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio.

Sabbath with Frank Lee – From the Daily Office – May 23, 2014

May 23, 2014 / eric / 0 Comments

From the Book of Leviticus:

For six days shall work be done; but the seventh day is a sabbath of complete rest, a holy convocation; you shall do no work: it is a sabbath to the Lord throughout your settlements.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Leviticus 23:3 (NRSV) – May 23, 2014)

Rest Area Highway Sign I am an absolutely faithful believer in the biblical concept of sabbath. I am also one of its worst offenders. No matter what day I choose to be my day “away from the office,” at least 50% of the time I will end up doing something work related. Today, for example, a Friday, is supposed to be my day off. What will I be doing? Giving my time to the church as a volunteer working on the refurbishment of the undercroft which is being converted to office space (laying peel-and-stick carpet tiles, to be precise). — This raises the interesting issue: “Can one volunteer at one’s place of employment?” I suspect the answer is “No” because whenever I am on the church property or in the church building I am “the rector,” not just some Joe who’s helping out.

If there isn’t something of that nature to do, there are (potentially) wedding rehearsals, Friday evening social events, Good Fridays (OK, only one of those each year), and other things that interfere. But is any other day a good day for clergy to take off? If there is, I haven’t found it in 24 years of ordained ministry. No matter what day I have selected as my “day off,” it has been subject to interruption and disruption. So keeping sabbath is rather difficult to do. One has to be very intentional about it, which is why God enjoined it on everyone in the Hebrew community in the Law of Moses. Left each to our own devices, we fail to do it; if everyone is doing so, one has lots of community support.

Several years ago I had a colleague whose appointment book a couple of times each week included some time with “Frank Lee.” Her parish staff were told in no uncertain terms that when she was away for her meeting with Mr. Lee she was not to be called, ever. Nothing was important enough to disturb her time with him. After a couple of years working with her, the parish secretary became very curious as to who this Mr. Lee was. He wasn’t on the parish rolls; he never came to the church office; he never called; the rector never called him. Who was this strange man the rector would go away to spend a few hours with?

My friend informed her that Frank Lee was nobody. Not a nobody, but quite truthfully nobody. He didn’t exist. He was simply a place marker for some inviolable personal sabbath time. His name was derived from a famous movie line: “Frank Lee, my dear, I don’t give a damn.” My colleague had determined that her sabbath time was so important that she truthfully did not give a damn about anything else during those few hours.

The parish secretary breathed a sigh of relief, my friend says. She’d thought the rector was having an affair! Which is both funny and sad. It’s sad that a priest has to resort to subterfuge of this sort to get that personal sabbath time; it’s sad that taking it could lead to suspicion of infidelity.

I’m not able to sustain the effort needed to maintain a “Frank Lee” of my own. Like most clergy, I’m too willing to set aside personal time to attend to the needs of my parishioners, the diocese, the clergy association, or whatever. I don’t say “No” when and as often as I should and then I end up resenting my lack of personal time. I know that this is common among parish priests and pastors because I hear my colleagues saying the same things when we get together for coffee, conversation, and mutual support.

It’s funny, though, that in those conversations no one calls anyone to account! As supportive colleagues in ministry what we ought to be doing is not commiserating with one another; we ought to be supporting one another in claiming those times with Frank Lee and strongly, forcefully encouraging one another to do so. As the ancient Hebrew community of old supported (and Jewish communities of today support) one another in honoring the sabbath, we should support and encourage one another to take our personal sabbath times. (Our denominational judicatories should do the same, but often do not.)

So, brother and sister priests and pastors, get some time of complete rest, hold for yourself a holy convocation, do no work, take personal sabbath time, get together with Frank Lee!

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Father Funston is the rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio.

Curmudgeonly Conversations – From the Daily Office – May 21, 2014

May 21, 2014 / eric / 0 Comments

From Book of Leviticus:

You shall each revere your mother and father, and you shall keep my sabbaths: I am the Lord your God.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Leviticus 19:3 (NRSV) – May 21, 2014)

Muppet Curmudgeons Statler and Waldorf Time for me to put on my curmudgeon hat and unload a rant I’ve been promising myself for the better part of two weeks. It’s a matter of respect for elders, so this verse which links reverence of parents with reverence of God is a perfect entrée for me to set down what’s been bugging me.

Three times in the past couple of weeks I answered our home phone and was immediately asked: “Is Charles there?” (I could go off on another tangent about telephone etiquette and how inappropriate and rude it is to respond to someone’s “hello” with this sort of question, but that’s a cranky-old-man discussion for another time.)

There’s only one Charles who lives in our home, me. I don’t use my first name, so I immediately know this is someone who doesn’t know me. Since the caller has not first identified herself — all three calls were from women and I think all were probably in their 20s or early 30s, I ask, “Who’s calling please?” In one case it was a charity seeking contributions; in the second it was a lawn service looking for customers; the third, a vendor of “retirement services,” whatever those are.

Once I ascertained who was calling, I responded as I usually do, “This is Mr. Funston. What can I do for you?” In every case, the young woman replied, “Well, Charles . . . .” And that’s when I began to think about someone’s lack of respect for elders (especially someone who has implied by his self-identification that this call is not a “first-name basis” conversation).

I’ll grant that the charity solicitor probably would have no way to know the age of the person she was called. The lawn service lady wouldn’t either, although the fact that she was calling homeowners might have suggested that many, if not most, of her contacts would be older than her. The lady drumming up business for “retirement services,” however, was surely calling a defined demographic: the cranky and curmudgeonly, the decrepit, those nearing the time of kicking the bucket, the people whose useful working life is coming to an end . . . in short, people older than her!

When did it become acceptable to call strangers, especially older strangers, by their first names? When did it become acceptable for people to adopt a false attitude of familiarity toward those, especially their elders, with whom they are not familiar at all? And (to quoted verse leads me to ask) is this failure of respect for others (especially elders) related to the amply demonstrated decrease in the percentage of the population which describe themselves as “religious”?

In William Langland’s 14th Century allegory of Christian maturation, The Vision of Piers Plowman, respect for elders is portrayed as one of the stages along the way to salvation, one through which the pilgrim must pass before being able to show respect for God. So I am clearly not the first to wonder about this relationship, the connection set out so plainly in the linkage made in this verse from Leviticus.

In the Muslim tradition of adab (which can be loosely translated as “etiquette,” “good manners,” or “proper behavior”), it is a sign of respect to the Creator when we respect and love others simply because, like us, they are human. It is a part of adab to let one’s elders speak first in daily conversations and situations. In Islamic tradition, the Prophet Mohammed is sometimes quoted as saying, “To show respect to an old Muslim with white hair manifests true respect for God.” In the Holy Qur’an, one can find a sentiment not dissimilar to today’s quoted verse from Leviticus; for example, “We have enjoined upon man care for his parents. * * * Be grateful to Me and to your parents.” (Surat Luqman 31:14)

Is there a connection between respect for one’s parents and other elders and respect for God? The holy texts suggest there is. Is there a relationship between a decline in respect for one’s elders and a decline in the population which is religious? One might need to have become a decrepit old curmudgeon to think so . . . so I guess I qualify and I do believe that.

What I can’t believe is how much I sound like my grandfathers! (I won’t get started on how contemporary parents — particularly my generation, the boomers — have failed to teach these things. That would keep me here all day and into next week!)

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Father Funston is the rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio.

High Father – A Poem (May 13, 2014)

May 13, 2014 / eric / 0 Comments

Whiskey Glass

Patriarchs die
producing epic tales
hidden from generations
never to be heard

1958, age 38
my father
alcohol, an argument, an automobile
a Greek tragedy untold

1960, age 61
my mother’s father
colin cancer, terrible pain
a Victorian novel unwritten

1977, age 96
my father’s father
long life, bitter estrangement
Shakespeare unperformed

1993, age 49
my elder brother
brain cancer, robbed of everything
a modern morality play unseen

2006, age 84
my stepfather
tobacco habit, emphysema
a series of short stories unread

Beside the 21st Century grave
spoke my nephew,
“Now, Uncle,
you’re the patriarch.”

It was not supposed to be
It was not written to be
this way
This is the wrong story.

Patriarch
Patris, Latin, “father”
Arche, Greek, “high”
High father

Whiskey in my glass,
on my breath, in my blood
on my brain — high father.
Patriarch, indeed

High father: Hi, Father!
Hie, father — hie, farther!
Hie thee to a future, father!
Long story, maybe.

Epic?
Who can say?

by C Eric Funston
13 May 2014

I Don’t Know – From the Daily Office – May 13, 2014

May 13, 2014 / eric / 0 Comments

From the Book of Exodus:

Moses said to Aaron, “What did this people do to you that you have brought so great a sin upon them?” And Aaron said, “Do not let the anger of my lord burn hot; you know the people, that they are bent on evil. They said to me, ‘Make us gods, who shall go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.’ So I said to them, ‘Whoever has gold, take it off ‘; so they gave it to me, and I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf!”

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Exodus 32:21-24 (NRSV) – May 13, 2014)

Golden Calf “I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf!”

I chuckle every time I read this story and get to this point. In fact, when the story of the golden calf has been read in church and the reader gets to Aaron’s disclamation of responsibility, I’ve been known to laugh out loud.

Once, years ago, in a bible study group reading Exodus, I asked, “How old was Aaron?” No one knew, but we were all pretty certain that Moses and his brother were not young children at the time of this story. Nonetheless, a young child is exactly what Aaron sounds like: “I threw the gold in the fire, and out came this calf!” No mention of his forming the mold, pouring the molten the gold, breaking the mold, polishing the casting, and all the rest that goes into the making of a metal statue. The calf just “came out.”

There was a phantom in our house when my children were very young. We’d find that someone had opened the orange juice and not only taken some, but also spilled a good deal on the kitchen counter and floor. “Who did this?” we would ask. “I don’t know,” would be the answer. The contents of my wife’s purse were spilled there was lipstick smeared on things. “Who did this?” we demanded of the little girl with red all over her face. “I don’t know,” she told us. Someone once tried to make sand castles in the cat box. “Who did this?” we asked the little boy with sand fingers. With a straight face he replied, “I don’t know.”

We never caught I Don’t Know doing any of these things (or many others), but there was plenty of evidence of his (or was it “her”?) existence. I Don’t Know was a very active sprite! Apparently, I Don’t Know was much older than we thought. He or she appears to have been with the Hebrews in the desert. — “Who made this golden calf?” — “I don’t know. I threw the gold in the fire and out came this calf!”

In the modern adult world, I Don’t Know has gotten more adapt at hiding his or her identity. “Who made that decision?” we ask. The answer is often one of I Don’t Know‘s alter egos: a committee, the vestry, the (unnamed) higher-ups, the council, management, the administration. Could it be that I Don’t Know is being scapegoated?

Imaginary friends are a healthy part of maturing. Research shows that children with imaginary companions tend to be less fearful, laugh more, smile more, engage more with peers, and are better able to imagine how someone else might think. An imaginary friend can aid a child to handle fear, explore ideas, or gain a sense of competence, but children with imaginary friends will sometimes blame them for misbehavior in an attempt to dodge the displeasure of adult authority. I Don’t Know is not exactly an imaginary friend, but disclaiming responsibility and deflecting blame is certainly child-like (if not childish) behavior.

“When I was a child, I spoke like a child,” wrote St. Paul, “I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.” (1 Cor 13:11) Jesus once told a story about someone who decided to stop blaming I Don’t Know. The man in the story “put an end to childish ways” and said to himself, “I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you.'” (Lk 15:18)

We human beings of all ages when challenged still seem invoke I Don’t Know to avoid personal responsibility on a pretty regular basis. Christian maturity, coming (as Paul said) “to the measure of the full stature of Christ,” (Eph 4:13) no longer laying things at the feet of I Don’t Know is something for which we all need to strive. We need to give up being like Aaron; we need to put an end to childish ways.

Is that going to happen on a general basis any time soon?

I could answer, “I don’t know.” But the truth is, I think I do.

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Father Funston is the rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio.

Grandparental Nicknames – From the Daily Office – May 10, 2014

May 10, 2014 / eric / 1 Comment

From Matthew’s Gospel:

As he walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the lake — for they were fishermen.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Matthew 4:18 (NRSV) –May 10, 2014)

Grandfather Nicknames Sometime this fall, probably during October, my wife and I will become grandparents for the first time. Last night, a friend asked, “What will you be called?” Because the question came out of the blue (we hadn’t been discussing children or grandchildren), I didn’t know what he was asking — and my face must have shown it. “As grandfather,” he clarified, “what will you be called as a grandparent?”

Good question. Is it really up to me? Do I get to say, “I want to be called [something]”? If so, I’d like to be called by one of the Irish nicknames: “Daideó” (pronounced “DAH-doe”) or “Móraí” (pronounced “MO-ree”) or “Papaí” (pronounced “PAH-pee”). The actual word for “grandfather” in Irish is seanathair which means “old father” or (in older Irish) “wise father”; an alternative is athair mór which means “great father” (“great” here is more akin to “big” than to “wonderful”).

But is it really up to me? Families have long-running traditions about naming grandparents, I think. Every grandmother (for the three generations I have known) on both sides of my family was known as “Grammy” — my mother called hers “Grammy Buss” and “Grammy Sargent”; mine were “Grammy Grace” and “Grammy Edna” (we were a less formal generation, I guess), and my mother was “Grammy Betty” to our children.

Grandfathers were less uniformly addressed. I don’t know what my greatgrandfathers were called; both were long dead when I was born. My maternal grandfather, Richard Sargent, was “Daddy Rich” (a combination of what my mother and grandmother called him); my paternal grandfather was “C.E.” (what everyone called him) or, less frequently, “Granddad.” My father was deceased when his grandchildren were born, so if he was referred to at all it was as “your grandfather, York”; my stepfather, Stan Shivers, was called “GrandStan” by my niece and nephew and my children.

One thing I’ve noticed is that the first-born grandchildren get to make the decision. My brother was nearly ten years older than me, and I had two older paternal cousins, so by the time I came along grandparental names were pretty much cast in stone. We have nieces and nephews several years older than our own children, so they had settled the issue on both sides long before our kids had a say.

All of this comes to mind this morning because of “Simon, who is called Peter.” It was Jesus who gave him that name: “I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church.” (Mt 16:18) For many years, I wondered why Jesus gave Simon this nickname and thought it was simply out of affection — it’s nearly the equivalent of “Rocky” and since Simon Peter often seems as dense as a bag of rocks, that made sense.

But I’ve come recently (while studying the prophets with an Education for Ministry group) to believe that Jesus is following in the tradition of Isaiah and, since he has no son to name, he is giving Simon a symbolic prophetic nickname in the same way that prophet named his children. Isaiah named his sons Shear-jashub, which means “the remnanet shall return,” and Maher-shalal-hash-baz, which means “he has hurried to plunder,” as signs against Judah and Jerusalem. I think Jesus gave Simon the new name Peter in a similar way, as a prophetic sign to the church.

Shear-jashub, Maher-shalal-has-baz, and Simon Peter had no say in the matter. So I still wonder with respect to this question of grandparental naming, is it really up to me?

And I wonder if grandparental naming is a prophetic activity. Does the name chosen shape the relationship? Does it portend what the relationship will be? Certainly, one would suspect that if a child is taught to call its grandfather “Grandfather,” that relationship will be rather different than that of a child who calls his or her grandfather “Grampa.” But do “Granddad” or “Papaí” or “Nano” shape the bond differently? And, if so, how?

This matter of choosing a grandparental nickname is serious stuff . . . assuming it really is up to me.

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Father Funston is the rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio.

Getting Older – From the Daily Office – April 29, 2014

April 29, 2014 / eric / 0 Comments

From the Gospel according to John:

Jesus said to his disciples: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid. You heard me say to you, ‘I am going away, and I am coming to you.’ If you loved me, you would rejoice that I am going to the Father, because the Father is greater than I. And now I have told you this before it occurs, so that when it does occur, you may believe.”

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – John 14:27-29 (NRSV) – April 29, 2014.)

Nursing Home Hallway My mind really isn’t on the scriptures this morning . . . except this idea of being informed of something before it occurs, so that when it does occur, one will be ready to accept it.

A few weeks ago our son and daughter-in-law told us that they are expecting, but swore us to secrecy, forbade us from telling anyone until the news was “FBO” (“Facebook official”), and then told us their plans for telling various people and when it would be public. They put their FBO announcement on his page last night. Of course, I misunderstood and told someone before they put their announcement on Facebook, who then mentioned it on Facebook before they did and let the cat out of the bag (so to speak), and I got in trouble. Story of my life with my kids, really . . . I’ve spent a lot of the last thirty years in that sort of trouble.

Anyway, I’m now faced with impending grandfatherhood — I have been told before it occurs, so that when it does occur, I may be ready. Except I don’t actually have the vaguest idea how to do this, how to grandparent, or how to get ready to grandparent, and I’m not even sure I want to.

My own father died long before I could see how he might have grandparented (I suspect he would have been terrible at it). Of my maternal grandfather, almost the only memories I have are of someone sick with colon cancer for several years. And my paternal grandfather, about whom I wrote yesterday, was a very stern, but kind man who taught me many things (gardening, penmanship, fly fishing), but then disinherited my brother and me because of a 40-year-old grievance against my parents — not the best model of honest intrafamily relationship. My stepfather did as good a job as a stepparent can being grandfather to the children of his wife’s kids with whom he had a rocky relationship; not a good foundational model, although perhaps the best I have available.

The truth is, as I said, I’m not sure I want to be a grandparent! It’s nothing I have aspired to (despite obligatory public kidding with my son and his wife). I think of grandparents as old and I’m not ready to be old. My heart is troubled by and I am, to be honest, afraid of old age. My definition of that term — “old age” — has been a flexible, changing one over the years, but at nearly 62, I am forced to admit that if I haven’t arrived there quite yet, I am ambling down the hallway toward it. The current life expectancy of American males is 76 years; I am 81.6% of the way there. I may not have one foot in the grave, but one foot is definitely starting to stroll down that corridor! I’m not ready to walk the rest of the way and sit in the wheelchair, at least not yet.

This child’s other grandfather has practice — my daughter-in-law is one of three sisters and both of her sisters have had children — so maybe I’ll just let him take the lead on this. I’ll be the grandfather who sends money on birthdays and holidays; he can be the one who embarrasses the child while on summer vacations, camping trips, ski outings, weekends at the beach, grandparents’ day at school, and that sort of thing. He’s closer, anyway (just a couple hours’ drive away).

Obviously, I’m not at peace with this development in our lives. And I suppose it has as much to do with my feelings about the way our society treats the elderly (which is to say, grandparents) as anything else. I’ll admit to having unresolved issues arising from my own mother’s, stepfather’s, and gay bachelor uncle’s last years of life — researching, rejecting, choosing, and finally rejecting nursing homes for my mother, settling instead for expensive in-home round-the-clock private duty nursing; hospice care in my stepsister’s home for my stepfather; an intensive care home for my bed-ridden uncle. One of the hardest things for me to do in my pastoral work is visit older people in nursing homes and assisted living facilities; those places give me the willies, especially when I’m there during a visit by someone’s grandchildren! Impending grandparenthood raises the specter of the nursing home . . . and that is not a vision I relish.

I love my children and I rejoice that my son and daughter-in-law are going to be parents. I think they’ll be very good at it. Is there a way they could do that that wouldn’t involve my being a grandparent?

I have been told about it before it occurs, so that when it does occur, I will be ready to accept it . . . I hope.

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Father Funston is the rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio.

Jesus Is a Little Rough – From the Daily Office – April 28, 2014

April 28, 2014 / eric / 1 Comment

From the Gospel according to John:

Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.” Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me?”

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – John 14:8-9a (NRSV) – April 28, 2014.)

Charles Edgar Funston, Jr. I think Jesus is being a little rough on Philip. Granted, Jesus has done everything possible during his ministry to make the Father known, to be transparent to those around him, to reveal as much of himself as he can. Still, it is possible to be with someone for years and still not know them.

True story from my own life . . . My parents married in 1940. In 1943, my only brother was born. I followed nine years later. Throughout our childhoods, much of which we spent with our parternal grandparents, it was generally believed in the family that my brother was the favored grandchild and, though there were two grandchildren born to my father’s only sibling between us, that I was the next favored.

My father died accidentally in 1958. At the time, my brother was living with my grandparents while attending a private high school in my parents’ hometown. After our father’s death, I began spending every summer with our grandparents. My brother and I spent a lot of time with them!

My grandfather died in 1977; my grandmother, in 1981. It was at her death that we learned that, because my grandfather had disapproved of my parents’ marriage in 1940, he and my grandmother had disinherited his son (my father), his daughter-in-law (my mother), and his grandchildren — the allegedly “favored grandchildren” — my brother and me.

It is possible to be with someone for years and still not know them. I loved my grandfather (his picture illustrates this reflection), but I didn’t know him.

So I understand Philip. And I think Jesus is being a little rough on him.

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Father Funston is the rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio.

Category: Family (Page 7 of 15)

A Share in All that Happens – From the Daily Office – June 10, 2014

Strong and Courageous – From the Daily Office – June 2, 2014

The Monday of a Three-Day Weekend – From the Daily Office – May 30, 2014

Sabbath with Frank Lee – From the Daily Office – May 23, 2014

Curmudgeonly Conversations – From the Daily Office – May 21, 2014

High Father – A Poem (May 13, 2014)

I Don’t Know – From the Daily Office – May 13, 2014

Grandparental Nicknames – From the Daily Office – May 10, 2014

Getting Older – From the Daily Office – April 29, 2014

Jesus Is a Little Rough – From the Daily Office – April 28, 2014

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