"Washed Away & Back Again with the Outgoing Tide."

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So, Sunday's sermon - quite possibly my last sermon ever (and certainly for the foreseeable future), and much different than most of the preaching I've done in my nearly 30 years of ministry. Just a list of notes scribbled on the Order of Service in roughly the order I hoped to address them. But on another level you could say I'd been preparing that sermon my entire lifetime. Started out with a little riff about Father's Day, and the summer solstice, and what it was like to be called "father" by people who really didn't know much about our faith tradition. Was sitting in my wheelchair at the head of the aisle, because I just wasn't feeling strong enough to climb up into the high pulpit, even though it wasn't nearly as high as I'd remembered. And eventually I got around to describing how I became a Unitarian to begin with (a story I've often told in the context of newcomers orientation classes) -- knowing that I WAS a Unitarian, but not really knowing what that meant, since my father had chosen to leave the church in Palo Alto at just that time, in rebellion against its "Hippie" culture and anti-war activism.

But fortunately, once we moved back to Seattle the following summer, there was another UU Church (Eastshore Unitarian in Bellevue Washington) just a mile or so from our home, so on Sundays I would arrange to ride my bicycle past the front door just as services were letting out, and then jump off real quickly just to see whether there was anything of interest in the pamphlet rack or on the book table. That's where I found a 35 cent Bobbs-Merrill edition of William Ellery Channing's "Unitarian Christianity and other Sermons." Channing preached that sermon on May 25th, 1819 at the ordination of Jared Sparks as the minister of the Unitarian Church in Baltimore, Maryland...Unitarianism's first real expansion outside of New England and "the neighborhood of Boston." And he took as his text that day a passage from Paul's First Letter to the Thessalonians, chapter five verse 21: "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." Channing argued from this text that Unitarianism's leading principle in interpreting Scripture is that the Bible is a book written for human beings, in the language of human beings and its meaning is best discerned in the same manner of that of other books, which is to say through the constant exercise of reason.

Well, that all sounded perfectly reasonable to me, but next I needed to come up with an actual Bible of my own, which I eventually did a few months later during a High School Debate trip, where I stole a Gideon Bible out of my bedside drawer at the Leopold Hotel in Bellingham, Washington. I mean, it was right there waiting for the taking, and so I took it...and I haven't really looked back since....

The rest of the sermon pretty much explored many of the same themes I've been talking about in Portland the last few months: the importance of (and relationships between) Worship, Education, Fellowship, Hospitality, Outreach, Social Justice and Pastoral Care in creating authentic and devoted communities of faith, along with the interdependent qualities of Humility and Gratitude, Generosity and Service, which form our Character and provide the energy and commitment to "be of use." This commitment often has its seeds in some sort of "unitive" experience (which someone like myself might even describe as "mystical"): the recognition that we are a very small part of much larger "whole," yet whole within ourselves and still completely dependent upon things beyond our control for our very existence and survival.

There were a few other minor themes I touched on as well, but I can't for the life of me now remember what they were. It was SO great though finally to have this chance to get back to church, to see so many of those wonderful, familiar faces, and also to met some of the folks who have joined the church since I departed from there in 2003. And then there are the faces of the missing: Grace Grossman, Faith Oldham, Ginny Coffin, Cynthia Young, Bill Hance, and Margaret Hitchcock to name just a few. So many fond memories, of challenges faced and risks taken, and joys and sorrows shared.

But the most gratifying thing of all was the way in which so many people pulled together to make the trip possible at all. What under "normal" circumstances might have been an easy and pleasant weekend excursion turned into a major expedition, physically challenging for both myself and my caring hosts, and with hundreds of dollars of additional, unanticipated expenses. And I'm also worried that this may well have been my final visit ever to The Faraway Island. Couldn't even make it to the deck to throw my pennies at the Bryant Point Lighthouse; had to send my traveling attendant upstairs to do it for me instead. So we'll see. One thing I do know for certain; I love you all so much that the mere thought that I may have just seen you all for the last time breaks my heart and brings tears to my eyes.

Something that seems to happen to me pretty routinely these days....

Captain Rainbow and the Magnificent Saffron Boy Rise Again!

Following my early Friday morning pain episode, which deeply concerned both my traveling companion and my hosts, there was a long discussion about what would be the best way to proceed -- whether I should check myself into the hospital, or even continue to remain on the island at all. Both the current settled minister and the minister emeritus also become involved in our conversation, as well as eventually an ER Doc and the hospital caseworker...both of whom are good friends of the ME. This after a ride in with the firefighters, and about a three-hour wait in an examination room, while my pain gradually subsided (as I knew it would) and the hospital officials tried to explain to all concerned why they couldn't just admit me to the hospital because I would sleep more comfortably there. So they sent me home after walking me around the hospital a little, with instructions to carry on with my usual routine and return if things got any worse.

Meanwhile, the CSM lined me up with a friend and parishioner who does live-in home health care as part of a business he calls "Good Works!" Six years earlier, just as I was getting ready to leave the island, he and I had become acquainted at a going-away party for yet another parishioner. He was wearing a magnificent saffron shirt from a Buddhist monastery/meditation center where he had been for awhile, and I was wearing a white greek fisherman's hat with a rainbow-dove pin attached in the front, so I had quickly christened us "Captain Rainbow and Saffron Boy," and it was a great relief to all of us that he was available to stay with me the rest of the weekend, especially since PB needed to get back to the mainland Saturday morning so she could preach at her own church Sunday.

So, so far so good. Went to bed Friday night feeling fine and looking forward to a great weekend, but woke up Saturday morning once again feeling "acute and intractable back pain," which lingered on until nearly two in the afternoon, when I finally discovered that one of the reasons it hadn't dissipated was that I had forgotten to take my ordinary morning painkillers earlier that morning! Unfortunately, at that point one can't merely double the dose and try to catch up; instead, I simply took my regular afternoon dose (plus the daily meds I had also missed that morning) and added as much breakthrough as I though was appropriate. That night I got in a car and drove to the home of some other parishioners who had invited me for a cookout, but I knew within 20 minutes of arriving that I wasn't going to be able to do it, so it was back to the ER at the Nantucket Cottage Hospital, where this time I was admitted right away

Of course, now I faced an entirely different set of problems. Slept like a baby, but I was terribly concerned that the attending physician wouldn't discharge me in time to preach on Sunday morning! Shouldn't have worried though. Not only did my cohorts from the cook-out slip me in a plate of ribs the night before, but the attending physician wrote the orders and the day nurse had me packed up and out the door before I could even finish my breakfast. Plenty of time up at church too, since for some reason I though the service started at 10 am, instead of the far more civilized 10:45. Which gave me plenty of time to catch up with more church friends as I thought a little about my message for the day: "Washed Away & Back Again with the Outgoing Tide." On Nantucket, a "Washed-Ashore" is someone who is not native to the island, but who typically lives there year round and shares many of the same hardships and concerns of the Islanders themselves. But more about that in my next post.

The Good Rev. Dr's 2009 bi-coastal "Adios, Adieu and Godspeed" final farewell tour

I've decided to post-date a few of these entries from my journal, which has also suffered in terms of timeliness because of my travel travails, but it seems like the most logical thing to do. So looking back now to the "thirteenth" hour, I ended up giving my Pink Martini tickets to the woman and her son who had been driving me around Portland for most of the past two months, and then was able to rent a Ford Explorer at one of the local agencies, and with the help of two self-appointed "handmaidens," arrived in Carlisle on June 16th just in time for the "Milk & Cookies" meet-up they had been promoting through their church bulletin. Still, a very touch and go thing, with a lot of folks going the extra mile just to make it happen at all. Makes me wonder whether I should change my policy of only rarely mentioning people by name here, but they know who they are...and, of course, Jackie was first among them.

After the cookies, I met up with another old friend of mine from the Carlisle church, and we had dinner together at the Concord Grill. One of the waiters there just so happened to be one of the guys I used to play basketball with regularly at Concord Parks and Rec, so we also exchanged e-mail addresses which may lead to some renewed contacts there as well. Like all of these events, the missing faces were just as prominent as the familiar ones; and yet that just seems to be the way it is these days in our high-speed, highly mobile 21st century society. I try to celebrate the people I see, mourn (on some level, at least), the people I miss, and hope that somehow the technology will also allow us renew these contacts and enjoy them even at a distance.

I'd planned on having Wednesday morning just to hang around the hotel spa and try to recover a little from the previous day's travel, but instead I received a phone call from another "favourite" family, which resulted in morning coffee with mom and eldest plus youngest, then lunch (at the Bamboo!) with dad and middle child. Nothing TOO strenuous at the time, but when my good friend PB arrived later that afternoon (recently home herself from five weeks in Turkey, Romania, and Paris) I knew I was going to feel a little pressed to keep up. We hadn't really communicated that clearly about the exactly extent and limitations of my abilities and "disability" (which would have been hard to do anyway since I really wasn't sure what they were going to be in the first place) or how much I was counting on her to help me navigate Nantucket (another essential unknown), but that first night at her house was a little challenging for me: upstairs bedroom, too-tall bed, trouble getting in to and out of the bathroom...that sort of thing. We wisely decided to pack lightly for the island, even more wisely deciding simply to leave the wheelchair in the car rather than unpacking it in the first place, caught our afternoon boat with little trouble, and soon were happily ensconced at the home of our host and seemed "home free" - a convivial atmosphere, lots of help if I needed it.... Mission Accomplished, and nothing more to worry about until it came to Sunday morning....

Wrong. Trouble really started a little after 2 am that morning, when I struggled out of bed to answer a call of nature and discovered that my walker could not navigate around a wooden hamper just inside the door. Hurt my back figuring that out though, which left me collapsed in bed with an excruciating back pain radiating down my right leg and (my apologies to the squimesh) an urgent, nearly bursting bladder to accompany it. Finally broke down and called PB on her cell phone (she had decided to sleep in the other house in order to avoid my snoring), who arrived just a little before 3 am appearing exactly as you might expect someone to appear in such a moment: tousled hair and spectacles, as angry as a drowned cat, and not a bit of artifice or inauthenticity to her -- in other words, to-die-for, drop-dead gorgeous...although I suspect she would have taken those sentiments in a slightly more LITERAL sense than I did. Not exactly Florence Nightingale or Clara Barton, but a close approximation. I was sure happy and relieved to see her, in any event.

Friday morning, after several phone calls and face-to-face conversations with my hosts and the current minister, the previous minister, and (of course) PB herself, I agreed to take a ride in a firetruck up the the Emergency Room of the Nantucket Cottage Hospital, to see whether there was anything they could do for me there. But I'll tell that part of the story in the next installment....

D-DAY!

Whew! -- and what a departure it was! Both my brother from from Greenwich and my ride to Boston called in sick this past weekend- the former with a sick child in the hospital, the latter with a temperature of 100.5 - news which sent us all scrambling trying to pull together plan B. Only cost my $3000 to "sell" my car back to the dealership (more on this later - promise), with only 6000 miles on it, and a $12,600 loan balance. Books weighed in at a lot more than anticipated as well, although I knew that they would, they ALWAYS do. But a great group of volunteers from the church managed though to get everything packed, and without much help with me, who basically spent most of Sunday afternoon and evening fast asleep and unable to communicate with the outside world except in brief moments of lucidity. In any event, the movers picked up everything Monday, and Tuesday Jackie once again scrambled around to line me up with a rental car and a couple of volunteer drivers from the choir eager for a road trip. And away we went! Itinerary from here on out included milk and cookies this afternoon with my former congregation in Carlisle, and then a week-long trip to Nantucket over the weekend, where I will also be preaching the sermon on the 21st. Don't have a title yet. Probably something about the longest day of the year. And then after Nantucket, New York (well, suburban Connecticut) where I will be staying with my brother until we all fly out together on the 30th. Fourth of July fireworks on the beach, perhaps 3 weeks of reading and sunshine, followed by a quick weekend trip to Portland OR to visit my daughter, rub her tummy for luck and celebrate her marriage last spring to her longtime live-in boyfriend (another firefighter), and the expected arrival of their first child (Margie's and My first grandchild!) sometime near the end of August.

But first from there to Sacramento, to unpack this great mess and get hooked up with my new team of doctors ad UC Davis. Like most tragic heros, my great strength (boundless optimism)) is also the source of my undoing. So ouch! But there it is: Tim's 2009 BiCoastal Farewell Summer "Tour de la Couer." Hope to see or hear from all of you somewhere along the way.

Approaching the Eleventh Hour

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A very difficult time this morning getting out of bed in time for my 8 am ride to Maine Medical center for a procedure during which my pulmonologist stuck an eight-inch needle into my back and withdrew about a quart of very yucky greenish-yellow fluid from the cavity between my right lung and the chest wall. Thankfully, I saw NONE of these things until the procedure was completed. But all was overlooked when the dreary, grey-rainy day that we started out with became a lovely sunny afternoon, just perfect for taking a two-hour sail around Cushing Island with a dozen or so of my parishioners, aboard the FRANCES, a 74-foot locally built Windjammer. Plenty of photos to follow, I hope; just until then, please enjoy their WEBSITE HERE, and daydream about the day when you might get an opportunity to spend an afternoon afloat in one of the most beautiful sailing venues in the world.

Meanwhile, moving day continues to loom just over the horizon: Monday morning at 9 am, no excuses. And yes, I will be ready. We will ALL be ready....

Take Me Out to the Ball Game...

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Went out last night with a dozen or so of my parishioners to see the Portland Sea Dogs play at Havelock Field. Noticed for the first time the "Binga's Fowl Pole" out in left field, near the faux Monster which gives our double AA ballplayers a small taste of what it might be like to hit in Fenway someday. Now all they need to do is remodel the right field bleachers in a similar fashion, putting in a "Pesky Pole" out by the picnic area, so that those who come there for the nightly BBQ can have that experience as well. We actually sat in the Pavilion seats out in right field, right next to the Sea Dogs Bullpen. Not nearly as elegant as I had hoped, but reasonably handicapped accessible without creating TOO much trouble. In any case, you can read a lot more about it at my sports blog, Obi Wannabe Kobe . Enjoy!

The Greatest Single Tool

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Q: What advice would you give to aspiring poets?
A: Read poetry. As much as you can, as often as you can. It's the only way to develop an eye for what sucks and what doesn't, which is the single greatest tool a poet can possess.

"and the rest is, well, not history, but at least a matter of record...." --Catherynne M. Valente

Catherynne M. Valente is the daughter of one of my High School debate partners, who has also just recently moved here to Peaks Island in Casco Bay. Haven't had a chance to meet her yet, and probably won't before I move back to the West Coast myself; but I have at least bought a few of her novels, and am looking forward to reading them this summer when my own life settles down a bit. She is apparently quite well respected in the tiny, cutting edge corner of the science fiction/fantasy world where she has found her niche, and I'm really looking forward to reading and learning more.

But today I just wanted to focus in on this small bit of advice to aspiring poets -- which is also true for aspiring novelists, playwrights, journalists, essayists, and even preachers.

Read.

Read as much as you can, as often as you can...in order to develop an eye (and more importantly, an ear) "for what sucks and what doesn't."

Neil Postman used to call it a "crap detector," and it really is the most important tool any aspiring "literary" artist can possess.

Or any reader, really.

Or for that matter, simply anyone....

Really.

Read.

“Man, I look like Geronimo....”

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And those were practically the first words out of his mouth when I last visited Walter at the Cumberland County Jail, and we got to talking about his mug shot in the paper. And he really does look pretty scary in that photo -- dangerous, older than his years, a little used up by a hard life of drinking and living on the streets. But this is not at all the Walter that I know, the man who has sat quietly in the back of the church for over a year now, and occasionally attended the coffee hour, and actually made some friends (other than me) in the congregation. We know a quiet, gentle, kind and talented wandering soul who has found his way into our community and who now has an opportunity to create a new life for himself as an artist and college student...or at least he did until he was arrested three weeks ago. And now that life is up for grabs, simply because his right to a fair and speedy trial looks like it will be neither speedy nor entirely fair.

Notwithstanding the legal technicality that it was within his reach had he known it was there, no one who knows Walter believes that he is guilty of the crime with which he is charged, Possession of a Concealed Weapon. It wasn’t his car, there’s no evidence it was his knife, if it was concealed from anyone first and foremost it was Walter, who just so happened to be sitting in the passenger seat under which the knife was hidden. The only thing Water was concerned about concealing was the beer, and that only after he realized that the alley was full of cops, well after the initial confrontation and arrest, all of which he claims happened behind his back and without his knowledge. All he was interested in was sitting in the passenger’s seat and drinking more beer, which is kinda how he’d gotten to be there in the first place.

Nor does anyone who knows him believe that Walter is guilty of the crime with which he is NOT being charged (at least not formally), which is conspiracy to participate in a cold-blooded, premeditated triple murder. It simply doesn’t pass the so-called “sniff test.” None of the evidence implicates him: not his car, not his guns, and this time the weapons weren’t even in his possession -- rather they were still behind him in the trunk, while Walter himself never left the car. Walter told me that he wasn’t even aware anything was going on until the back-up arrived with their lights and sirens, at which point his big concern became trying to hide (or finish up) the booze!

Which is not to say that Walter ISN’T guilty of a LOT of things, all of which basically boil down to using poor judgment and making bad decisions, which once again led to him being in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong people...”three sheets to the wind,” as sailors are fond of saying, and his own worst enemy. And as I tried to tell the judge at Walter’s bail hearing last week, it’s not society that needs to be protected from Walter, it’s WALTER who needs to be protected from Walter...and the best way to achieve that is NOT to keep him in jail, but to send him through Rehab and to allow him to enroll in college, which is exactly where we were two months ago, when Walter was discharged from the hospital.

And this is where my boundaries all start to get a little fuzzy (and maybe even a little crazy), as I try to sort out the differences between my relationship with Walter as his pastor and our relationship as friends, between co-dependence and “Christian charity,” between Walter’s status as unique and individual human being, as a Veteran, as a Native American, as a member of an oppressed and marginalized social class, as a homeless alcoholic. Just another stereotypical "Drunken Indian." That sort of thing.

All this is further complicated by the fact that a month from now I’m going to be living on the West Coast, and will be unavailable to stand by Walter and support him in what I know firsthand is the very intimidating situation of enrolling in college as a forty-something year old adult. And for Walter this is even more intimidating that it was for me, who already had three college degrees when I returned to school again as an adult learner, and who had always found school a fairly friendly and welcoming place. So it’s no surprise for me that Walter sometimes feels cold feet, perhaps even self-doubt; or that he wonders whatever possessed him to make this decision, and second-guesses himself all the time. I can even understand why at times the street, drinking, and even jail might seem like safer (or at least more familiar) alternatives to the experience of attending Art School.

When he’s not drinking (and often even when he is), Walter is a very talented artist, and an intelligent human being: kind, caring, generous, funny, spiritual, and yet hardened in a way that once again is very different from my own experience, just as my experience as a student is very different from Walter’s. Once more, this is where the boundaries start to get fuzzy. For this to work, Walter has got to want this for himself more than I (and the other people in the community who have been pulling for him) want it for him. But I’m not really sure he even understands how important this can be for him in the same way that I do. This opportunity truly represents for him a chance for a new and different life, a “second chance” to create for himself whatever kind of lifestyle he chooses. Which is why it is SO IMPORTANT that he learns to make BETTER choices than he’s sometimes made in the past.

I also want to say that we all owe an incredible debt of gratitude to Officer Stephen Black, whose perceptiveness, quick action, and personal courage turned what might have been a national news story into a few local headlines. There have been enough church shooting tragedies in the news this past year. Thank God and Officer Black that we are not another.

My prayers right now are for everyone whose lives this incident has touched: Walter to be certain, but also the other defendant and the alleged targets, the members of my church (many of whom aren’t entirely sure WHAT to make of all this), the members of the larger Portland community, and a legal system where both justice and mercy (not to mention the presumption of innocence) are often obscured by the pressure to convict, and the ubiquitous “guilt” of just about everyone who is unfortunate enough to be swept up into the process. Including those of us who are only guilty of making assumptions, jumping to conclusions, or looking the other way. Walter has already served three weeks, and could easily be incarcerated through the end of the summer, on charges he is not very likely to be convicted of should this matter ever come to trial. No doubt at some point he will be enticed into pleading guilty in exchange for time served, and then with any luck he will be able to pick up the pieces of the life that was waiting for him. Or else just return to his familiar world of shelters and alcohol, until his next run-in with the law. I just wish it were possible for me to make more of a difference in all this. And who knows? With the help of others, maybe I still can.