When are we ever not in church?

     So on this Sunday morning, perhaps it is appropriate to share recent FB chat with the Trumper Joseph, who got a lot of air time in a previous post at this blog. After that, he switched lanes. Birmingham is our hometown, and we both attended the McCallie School in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Vanderbilt University in Nashville, and we both grew up in St. Luke's Episcopal Church in the Crestline side of Mt. Brook aka The Tiny Kingdom.

    Picking up where the previous post ended...

Sloan Bashinsky

I keep wondering if the Calvinists at McCallie School poisoned your brain and your soul?

Joseph

McCallie has nothing to do with my viewpoint. And while you're on this subject, I got E class for dancing in Lockett Lodge with the Howard High Glee Club who were our guests. Also if you remember the senior year requirement to give a talk at morning services in the chapel, I read from Kaliel (Kahlil) Gibran. No not a Calvinist. Just a St. Luke's communicant who was confirmed by CC Carpenter who helped the civil rights effort with meetings in his library for various black ministers in Birmingham. My Dad, though raised in a traditional southern Democrat family with forebearers who held local and state elected offices, became an active Republican in the 1952 election of Ike. What was your heritage?

Sloan Bashinsky
I also was a St.Luke's communicant confirmed by Bishop Carpenter. When he gave me the chalice to take my first sip ever of alcohol, it went down my thought wrong and I felt like I was going to choke and gag to death at the altar, and it took all of my will power to pretend everything was okay and walk back to the pew where my mother and father were and kneel and pretend I was praying, instead of dying. I was 12 years old. My mother and Lee Gram [the priest] and Ben Smith [the curate] had forced me through Confirmation training. When I gave my talk to the McCallie assembly, it was about the threat of communism to America. I was still pretty naive. It was along time before I figured out white supremicists were the real threat to America, and when I look at photos of MAGA rallies, it is there in plain view.

Joseph

So you see we're both products of WWII and Depression era parents. The difference is that I feel like the sensation one has when the back of the neck twitches enough to make you alert to danger is Trump warts and all makes me feel both political parties don't have anyone's interest in mind. Except I feel having a senile POTUS in office who obviously amassed for himself and his family ill gotten wealth by selling his influence to bad actor nations that want to destroy us. Communism is just a convenient buzz word, it's totalitarianism and total upheaval of civil rights. To me photos of Maga rallies show me ordinary people who still find God, Country and the US Constitution are still valuable even in a pluralistic society. When I look at videos of BLM burning stores it reminds me of being in the Army preparing for riot duty at Fort Bragg after the death of MLK and RFK. And that we are closer to a civil war. And I believe it can be easily started by the Left, our intelligence services and the lack of astute judgement of our Media. Have you ever walked the beach at low tide? To the less observant it looks like sand but if you get closer your eye can spot black point like arrowheads but really are shark teeth. January 6th is like that to me, a few bad actors in the midst of a political rally and the aftermath run amok by the jackboots of our Federal justice system.

Sloan Bashinsky
The MAGAS have a few token non-whites. In olden times, they would be called "Uncle Toms". I pick on the left and the right, because both side are totally fucked up. You call Biden a communist? If so, you are nuts, and ignorant, and know nothing about communism. You do not renounce Donald Trump? You will answer for that when your roll is called up yonder, or sooner. 
If Jesus were to come back today and go into St. Luke's and talk like he did in the Gospels, the people at St. Luke's would not like it at all. They might threaten him, not having a clue who he was, because he did not look like any of the Caucasians artists portrayed him. Episcopalians think they are saved by grace, but they read prayer books and listen to their priests, instead reading the Bible, where Jesus plainly often says the way people get close to God and the Kingdom is how they live. That's it. To the extent they live as Jesus lived and taught, they are saved by him. The same for any Christian, or non-Christian, or Atheist. The same for anyone who never heard of Jesus. 
Trump is possessed by a demon. A different demon, or maybe the same demon, is working on Biden. This is so crystal clear, that it is not seen by the American masses reveals just how blind, deaf and dumb they are. They have no clue that hobnobbing with either man, with either party, allows that demon, or those two demons, to infiltrate them, and they are clueless it is happening. 
I love Gibran's writings/verses, and I loved the two biographies written about him, the first by his American lover and secretary, the second by a Lebanese man. Two very different treatments, make it a whole. If he was an American and living today, Gibran would have had nothing to do with Trump, nor with Biden. Gibran would urge Americans to rebel, which he actually did urge his brothers and sisters in Lebanon do when he was younger, and he had to leave there and come to America, because it was no longer safe for him in his home country.

 

Joseph

Peace be unto you Sloan. We both have to wear an outer self and inner self and because we're human there isn't much we can do when our past is history and the future we can't predict. We live in the present moment, make the most of it.

Sloan Bashinsky
That is pretty much Jesus taught in the Gospels, with the caveat, God's will, not ours, be done. 

 

Joseph
Amen

 

Sloan Bashinsky

The last service I attended at St. Luke was in the fall 1999. The church was struggling financially. My view was, if the church did God's work, God would provide the money the church needed. I had read or heard Mother Teresa had said that to her workers, who were pushing her to soiicit donations for their work. The service that Sunday was devoted tor hitting the congregation up for money. The minister quoted Jesus saying in the Gospels, "Be a generous giver, good measure pressed down." I didn't think Jesus had in mind giving churches money, when he said that. I could not recall Jesus ever built a church made from earthly elements. I recalled my mother telling me that Lee Graham, who had built St. Luke's from scratch, starting out in an old farm house in Crestline Village, hated preaching on tithing, and he only did it one time a year, when the Episcopal Diocese required it. I attended a few services in that farm house, which much later was razed and the Mountain Brook Library was built there. Lee is the 5th person I memorialized in A Few Remarkable Alabama People I Have Known, which is a free read at afewremarkablealabamapeople.blogspot.com

Post-script

    Just after posting that at this blog, I opened a post from Poetic Outlaws, which is managed by a fabulous poet, Erik Rittenberry, who had posted one of his own poems there this morning.

Woke up Sunday morning to the ancient 
sound of the birds chirping outside 
my window. Laid there half-naked 
in a mess of sheets listening to 
her breathe. Her hair pours off 
the pillow. The taste of her love 
still lingers on my tongue.

Maybe I’ll attempt a poem today.
Or perhaps she and I will tote a bottle
of wine down by the pond
and read a little Steinbeck in the shade
of a sycamore and forget about
it all. 

The archaic eyes of a bearded Whitman
gaze down at me from a painting
on the wall.

I get out of bed quietly and shuffle
into the backyard. Barefoot and alive.
The black coffee in a cracked porcelain
mug stirs the blood. The golden liquid 
rays of the renewed sun pierce through 
the thirty-foot bamboo stalks that I 
planted a few years ago.

It’s springtime in the south and the breeze
feels good on my face. The crape myrtles
and magnolias are blooming. The cardinals
and blue jays flutter around the birdfeeder
as I watch the mischievous squirrels
creep ever so closer. The fresh jasmine
fills the morning with a sweet fragrance.
Daydreams and budding flowers.
Fresh dew glistens on the ferns and
philodendrons as my pooch
chases lizards in the
damp grass.

The flawless symphony of creation, the
eternal throb of life, my spirit 
drenched with an undisturbed joy,
a rare contentment. My ornery impulses
at ease, along with my ego. My countless
vices have succumbed to a natural 
innocence. Yesterday’s qualms are 
forgotten. The future is of no concern.
The bloodstain of history is far from 
my mind. Not a drab or dreary 
thought arises. Ambition is 
absurd. Death is a lie. 
I hear the words of Rumi 
wafting in the soft 
morning light,   
The breeze at dawn 
has secrets
to tell you. Don’t 
go back to 
sleep.

    I made this comment:

Just after posting at my new blog today, I opened the newest Poetic Outlaws offering, "Sunday Morning", from the top of the totem pole itself :-).

I once was madly in love with a woman, who grew up Southern Baptist and finally concluded they were too severe and she switched to attending the Episcopal church in which I had grown up after my mother switched from the Southern Baptists to a new church in an old farmhouse pastored by a young Episcopal priest.

Now, this woman I loved so much, our passion was not of this world, and often when we were alone, just sitting, talking, we went into something we called "the space", which was so smooth and silky, so marvelous, that I hoped it would never end.

She was convinced, if she did not attend church every Sunday, she would die and burn in hell. But one Sunday, I persuaded her to go with me to a nearby lake that rented canoes. I had been a pretty good whitewater canoeist, and I still figured I could keep from tipping over a canoe on a flat calm lake. 

It was a warm beautiful sunny spring day. We were in the space. We saw a great blue heron fishing in shallow water next to an island in the lake. But after it was over, she didn't want to do it again. 

 

Part of my blog post today, "When are we ever not in church", is about that Episcopal church, and is an insult to what Eric gave the world in his incredible poem, but, sadly, just as real.

The blog post begins...

"So on this Sunday morning, perhaps it is appropriate to share recent FB chat with the Trumper Joseph, who got a lot of air time in the previous post at this blog. After that, he switched lanes. Birmingham is our hometown, and we both attended the McCallie School in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Vanderbilt University in Nashville, and we both grew up in St. Luke's Episcopal Church in the Crestline side of Mt. Brook aka The Tiny Kingdom."

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com