Occasional thoughts of an Anglican Episcopal priest

Category: Prayer (Page 3 of 47)

Lenten Journal 2019 (14 April)

Lenten Journal, Day 39, Palm Sunday

Yesterday and the day before I wrote in this journal but did not post what I had written to Facebook as I have throughout the rest of Lent. Friday was our 39th wedding anniversary and Saturday, being the day before Palm Sunday, is when Evelyn and I remember the day our daughter disappeared (she was later found and all is well). What I wrote yesterday and Friday was simply too personal to put out on public social media.

Today we have stayed home from church because Evelyn has a rip-roaring upper respiratory infection. You should hear her cough! As we have done so, I have been thinking about the way we have commemorated Palm Sunday as married persons for the last 39 years. Except that year when Caitlin went missing, they have been invariably the same (as least for me): Saturday spent decorating the church with palms; Sunday the simple 8 a.m. distribution of palms within the context of Holy Communion; the later service a big production number beginning with a procession around the church and through the cemetery (if there was one nearby, as there has been here in Medina and was in San Diego), a choral Eucharist, the dramatic reading of the Passion Narrative.

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Lenten Journal 2019 (11 April)

Lenten Journal, Day 36

Labhraím Gaeilge!

I really wish that were true (it means “I speak Irish”). I don’t. I study Irish. I forget Irish. I study it again.

That is how I spent today; using Duolingo and a free online course from Dublin City University, I have spent the day refreshing my memory of the Irish language, recalling things I learned a decade ago at a school in the Connemara Gaeltacht north and west of Galway City.

Irish is just one of the languages I have studied. I took Spanish in grades 5 through 8 in the Los Angeles city schools. I studied Latin throughout high school. I took Italian in an immersion course in Florence in 1969 and then French in a longer immersion course in Paris in 1973. I cannot speak, read, or write in any of these languages, although I could back in the day.

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Lenten Journal 2019 (8 April)

Lenten Journal, Day 33

I did it! I went to the gym this morning. How weird is that?

I went to the local Recreation Center, rode something called a “seated elliptical” or “recumbent crosstrainer” for 15 minutes (the Rec Center has the Nu-Step brand of these machines; I then walked the indoor walking track until I decided I didn’t want to overdo it and discourage myself with an injury. I needed and continue to need to do this for the on-going recovery of my prosthetic knee.

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Lenten Journal 2019 (7 April)

St Paul Window, St Paul's Church, Medina, OhioLenten Journal, Day 32 – 5th Sunday in Lent

We went to a particular parish for church today because we had read that following the late service there would be a docent-led tour of their historic building. It is one we particularly like and in which we are especially interested, so we were really looking forward to it. But we were very disappointed. As we were driving home, I snarkily suggested to Evelyn that I had found my retirement volunteer gig – joining that congregation and becoming the docent to lead those tours.

More power to the person who was the docent! He was clearly uncomfortable doing what he was doing, but he had stepped up to the plate and taken his swing and done the best he could do. Perhaps it just wasn’t his fault that he hit a blooper. It certainly wasn’t his fault that his tour group included (a) an architect with more than a little knowledge of the style of the building, (b) an historic preservation scholar actually working on a master’s thesis about the building, and (c) a priest (me) with an interest in stained glass. The three of us “supplemented” his tour spiel and probably threw him off stride.

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Lenten Journal 2019 (29 March)

Lenten Journal, Day 23

I linger over coffee
but I rush through eating an orange
I pour my coffee slowly and deliberately
savoring its aroma, craning my neck
to position my nose over the steam
breathing in the rich, roasted chocolate scent
earthy and acid, dark and mysterious
but I quickly peel an orange
ripping the rind from the flesh
putting asunder that which God had put together
I take contemplative sips of my coffee,
a half a mouthful at most,
meditating over its mellowness,
crispness, brightness, fruity palate, floral bitterness,
but I stuff my mouth with whole sections of orange,
sometimes two, sometimes three,
and crush them rapidly into pulpy juiciness
imagining my jaws acting like the juicer
of the lemonade vendor on the carnival midway

Lenten prayers are coffee and oranges
sometimes thoughtfully, carefully prayed,
sometimes hurried and rushed
sometimes a little of both
like breakfast

– C. Eric Funston, “Lenten Prayers,” 29 March 2019

Lenten Journal 2019 (27 March)

Lenten Journal, Day 21

God, I’m depressed. “My joy is gone, grief is upon me, my heart is sick.”[1]

Going through Lent without the regular support of a faith community while also recovering from major orthopedic surgery and observing the state of American politics and the state of American Christianity really has me in a blue funk and I can feel the “black dog” prowling around in the fog. It’s too much. Maybe this retirement thing, or the surgery, or both were bad decisions. “Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there?”[2]

I’m pretty certain that checking the New York Times and the Washington Post, Facebook and Twitter is occasionally a bad idea, maybe frequently a bad idea.

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Lenten Journal 2019 (22 March)

Lenten Journal, Day 16

I blew my Lenten discipline! I didn’t write anything yesterday. I thought about doing so all day long … I thought about writing down my reaction to something the Current Occupant had said and done, but just couldn’t bring myself to do so. I thought about writing about being taken to task online for using the word “hell” in a comment to a news article (“What kind of priest do you call yourself….?”), but (again) I just couldn’t get started on it. So, in the end, I wrote nothing.

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Lenten Journal 2019 (20 March)

Lenten Journal, Day 14

She was known to her friends as “Jo” or “Josie”. She was Josephina Magdalena Ekaterina von Binkerstaff-Wigglesbutt, Countess von Binkerstaff. Jo was a wealthy heiress (the Stilwell Wigglesbutts, you know) who, like Lady Grantham of Downton Abbey, had married into a failing aristocratic family (the Blaues Tel von Binkerstaffs) to prop up their fortunes. Widowed early, she became a patron of arts endowing several museums in her late husband’s memory.

She was also our first cocker spaniel, a stray we adopted while living in Blue Valley, Kansas (hence the “Blaues Tel” part of her story). We still remember Jo with considerable love and refer to her as “the best dog ever.” With Josephine began our tradition of inventing silly aristocratic names and outrageous histories for our canines.

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Lenten Journal 2019 (19 March)

Lenten Journal, Day 13

I had a first-in-the-morning appointment at the digestive disease medical office today, a pre-screening for the colonoscopy I have scheduled in two weeks. Weight, blood pressure, review of medications, instructions on which medications to discontinue ahead of the procedure, medical history review, that sort of thing … and, of course, the preparation instructions for the day before.

I can’t really think of anything more appropriate for Lent than colonoscopy prep, can you?

OK, I’m being facetious.

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Lenten Journal 2019 (15 March)

Lenten Journal, Day 9

I woke up this morning thinking of cleaning toilets. Not in the future sense, the “I have to clean the toilets today” sort of thinking. I did that yesterday. At least I cleaned one toilet yesterday, the one in our master bathroom. Put a gold star on the calendar and mark the day!

It’s probably because I did that yesterday that I woke up this morning thinking about toilets and whether the job I did yesterday would have passed Doris’s standards. Doris was my boss when I was 19 years old and working as a janitor at a small acute care hospital in Southern California. Doris was the hospital’s Executive Housekeeper. She was, I think, the first Muslim with whom I ever had any daily interaction.

Doris was in her 50s when I worked for her, so I’m pretty certain she’s dead now. Actually, this is sad to say, I hope she’s dead. I would rather think of her in Paradise than imagine her facing today’s world of bigotry and the news of Muslims murdered for their faith. Because today I also woke up to the news that 49 Muslims had been shot to death while worshiping in their mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand.

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