Povey Prattle

Christian prayer often seems to be a matter of giving good advice to God. God is probably responding:  “ my dearly beloved, I do not need your advice.  I simply want you to listen to the heart-beat of the universe”.     I found a little snake in my home today.  It was no more than 2 ½ inches long.  I think that it came in out of the rain.   I am preaching at the 8:00 and 10:00 Eucharists tomorrow (Aug 21 st  2011) at St. Boniface Church.   When I began to preach (at aged 16 years) I was filled with certainties about God, Jesus and the Bible. 51 years later I have fewer certainties. Maybe my preaching is better. But it’s much harder to put a sermon together than it used to be.    I was chatting with a local handyman on Friday last.  I told him that I am 68 years old.    As he drove away I remembered that I am “only” 67! In a moment of “hurry” I bought a barbecued chicken at my local “Pub...

PART FOUR OF FOUR My musings on the death of a child or sibling began with the conversation I had with a St. Boniface Church (Siesta Key FL) parishioner. (See PART TWO OF FOUR    - 17 th August entry on my blog). Those musings have been honed by the reading of “The Tender Land – A family love story” by Kathleen Finneran (published by Houghton Mifflin in 2000). Kathleen tells the story of her family: Mom, Dad and five children and their life together in St. Louis, Missouri.    It is a good, solid and loving Irish Catholic family, as “all-American” as you could imagine. The children are Michael, Mary, Kathleen (the story teller), Sean and Kelly. Sean, the fourth child and second son, took his own life at the age of fifteen. (I get teary eyed even as I write these words). Kathleen Finneran’s book is a powerful tale of family life, and of the tragedy of Sean’s death. It is not a “preachy book”, nor does it attempt to “answer the questions” which arise from youth...

PART THREE OF FOUR My siblings and I are wont to tell people that we are from a family of nine children.  Then we have to pause for a moment and add “actually there were ten of us”. For we had a sister who died.  Her name was Sylvia.  She was the third to be born, so her two older sisters (who are of course also my older sisters) have some memories of her birth and death. Mum or Dad never said much about Sylvia.  They were of the generation who kept many sorrows in their hearts. So what I know is very little.    I think that she was born in 1942 (two years before my twin and I were born).   From what I’ve gleaned I suspect that she was born with spina bifida, and that her life here on earth was very brief.  I think (but I am not certain) that she was buried at the foot of the grave of our paternal grandfather in Greenbank Cemetery, Bristol, U.K.  How odd that I know so little. This wee child was treasured by our Mum.  An...

PART TWO OF FOUR Five days ago a member of St. Boniface Church asked to talk with me after the mid-week Eucharist.  She had a question “What is heaven like?” In response I burbled on a bit with vague statements about heaven being a state of being and not a place, or about heaven being the experience of total bliss.  I knew that I was not being helpful. In spite of my burbling she persisted in conversation until she came to the nub of the matter.  She told me that she had come to terms with the death of her husband, but that she still felt raw, hopeless, even despairing following the death of her (adult) daughter. “Aye, there’s the rub”.  The death of a son or daughter, (whether a child or an adult) brings with it a burden which parents, siblings and grandparents find all but impossible to bear. My conversation with that good parishioner has led me to think a great deal about these unbearable losses.  I’ll write some more about this in the next two days. In...

PART ONE OF FOUR In 1778 John Adams, (later the second American President 1797-1801), set sail for France as part of a diplomatic commission which was sent by the Continental Congress to seek European support for the American cause versus Great Britain. He took with him his son, John Quincy Adams (later the sixth American President 1825-1829). John Quincy Adams (or Johnny as he was called by his family) was ten years old when he set out on this amazing voyage. His mother, Abigail Smith Adams, was “advanced” in her era in her advocacy for the rights of women and against slavery.  But she was a tough, demanding, and even manipulative parent.  She never failed to tell her son Johnny of her expectations and his failures.  Writing to him in France (remember - he was only ten years old!) she reminds him “never to disgrace his mother” and to be “worthy of his father”. “Dear as you are to me” , she wrote, “I had much rather you found your Grave in the ocean you have crosse...

On 15 th August 1984 I began my ministry as Rector at St. Stephen’s Parish, Pittsfield, MA.     Was that truly 27 years ago? On 15 th August 2000 I began my ministry as Rector at St. James’s Episcopal Church, Cambridge, MA.   Was that indeed 11 years ago?

In a spare ten minutes this afternoon I thought about the men who have been President since I moved to the United States. Then “off the top of my head” I came up with words and phrases which came to my mind for each of them.   This was neither an intellectual nor an analytical exercise. I  did not revise or hone what I had written. It might be fun if some of my readers did a similar exercise, for U.S. Presidents or for U.K. Prime Ministers.   Please post what you come up with. Remember please -  this is not for analysis or critique. If you post directly to my blog I will publish what you submit.  Or you can reply with a “note” on Facebook. Jimmy Carter:  A bit of a policy wonk. Maybe a micro-manager. Sounded preachy. Right instincts, wrong sound-bites. High interest rates. Iranian hostage crisis. Successful Panama Canal Treaty. Ronald Reagan: Believed his own rhetoric. Careless with the facts. Avuncular. Stupid invasion of Grenada. Cut and run fro...