Mystical Murmurs: My Interfaith Life

I've been so good. Do admit, I've successfully avoided the 2016 election on this blog. I made a pact with myself, even though my sense of outrage, over these many months, made my little fingers itch to be on the keyboard. But now, three weeks before the election, Donald Trump, the Tangerine Man (sorry, Bob Dylan) has finally driven me over the edge. It wasn't the recording of Trump boasting about his prowess in sexual assault, though that was an outrage. It wasn't his harping about Hillary Clinton's bad judgement, which seems to me the pot calling the kettle black. No, it's his insistence that the election is "rigged," and will be stolen from him. Arguably, the 2000 election was stolen from Al Gore, with the Florida recount and the Supreme Court's verdict in favor of Bush. But the whole system? The whole system? I guess Trump has forgotten any civics that he ever knew. He's forgotten that elections are run locally, and those who r...

There's a special place in my heart for World War II vets. My dad was in the Army, serving in the infantry with the 36th Division, when he was captured and imprisoned in Stalag VII-A, in Moosburg, Germany. That's a long and good story, which I will tell here, someday, at greater length. Dad died in 1997, at the relatively young age of 77. Now, nearly 20 years later, the rest of our World War II vets are passing at an alarming rate. From the website of the  National WWII Museum , in New Orleans, I gleaned the following: " According to statistics released by the Veteran’s Administration, our World War II vets are dying at a rate of approximately 492 a day. This means there are approximately only 855,070 veterans remaining of the 16 million who served our nation in World War II ." Now, I'm no math genius, but I think this means that, at this rate, all our living World War II vets will be dying within the next 5 years. It will truly be the end of an era. ...

Sixty-seven years is a very long time. One of the patients I recently visited on my volunteer chaplain rounds is a fairly new arrival at the senior facility. Well into her nineties, she has some physical limitations, but her mind is sharp, and she's bright as a new penny. Speaking with her is a real pleasure, and I look forward to our visits. Ellen (not her real name, of course) valued her independence. She had lived in her home, a large, three-story Victorian, for sixty-seven years, the last twenty or so on her own, after the death of her husband. Ellen is grieving for her house now, and trying to make the adjustment to living in her new apartment. "In my house," she complained during my last visit, "I knew where everything was. I could reach into a cabinet without looking, and find what I needed. Now I don't know where anything is. Where's the spatula? Where's the gravy boat?" The sad thing, of course, is that Ellen knows she will probabl...

I've been taking an informal survey among my friends. Of those of us who grew up around here (the tri-state area of PA-NJ-DE),  none of us remembers this kind of heat in September. Yet here we are, approaching the middle of the month, and my weather app informs me that it's 95 degrees. 95 degrees. Since I've always worked in academia, the arrival of September always brings me a jolt of energy: the kids are back to school, the leaves are turning brilliant colors, the nights are crisp and cool. All the cute sweaters we've bought for fall are hanging in the closet, begging to be worn. Yeah, OK. No jolt of energy this year. The kids are back to school and sweltering in their classrooms. The leaves are falling because they're dead . The nights are muggy, just as they were in July. And the cute fall sweaters are jammed into the back of the closet, because we're still wearing summer tops. And the regional forecast for the fall? Warm. Much above average. No s...

It's my favorite hour of the day, if the weather is fine -- that hour between 8:00 and 9:00 on a summer night. I always try to be out on my porch for what I call the "blue hour." My porch faces toward the east, so I may be missing a glorious sunset; on the other hand, the waning of the day is a lovely time, too. As the shadows lengthen, a subtle blue cast falls on the trees and neighboring buildings -- in the photo, the light-hued home across the street appears blue. The sky takes on that lucid blue that reminds me of the skies in illustrations by Maxfield Parrish, an early twentieth-century Philadelphia artist. Everything begins to quiet down. Up and down the street, mothers call for their kids, who head home. The chipmunks, who like to parade back and forth along the length of the porch during the daytime, vanish silently into whatever places chipmunks go for the night. The birds, too, begin to settle, with the exception of one bird who sings raucously practicall...

After two years of diligent study, 6 in-person intensives, and one Master's thesis, I was ordained as an Interfaith Minister by the Interfaith Temple last Friday, June 10. I also graduated and was awarded a Master of Theology degree from the New Seminary, the world's oldest interfaith seminary. Wow! What an experience! You can see me in the picture -- I'm the short one (of course) on the right. Despite exhilaration and a sense of accomplishment, I was so, so tired  after the ceremony and the long drive home. The following day, I was exhausted, and sat more or less in a lump, staring blankly at the TV. Now, today, I feel a bit better, more energetic. But I also feel ... new. "New" is not a typical feeling for me, as my 63rd birthday approaches in August. But new is how I feel. I feel very tender and vulnerable, as if I have lost a gigantic scab and found pink, baby skin beneath it. This new baby skin has to mature, toughen, with exposure to air and sun. S...

The hospice for which I volunteer has been having lots of vigils lately. Fortunately, we have many volunteers. Still, over the course of the month I've been called on several times to sit with and comfort a dying person. Normally the hospice sets up vigils when no family members are available to sit with the patient, or when exhausted family members need to be relieved for a bit so that they can take care of some of their own needs. So it's often just me and the patient, holding hands and  listening to quiet music. I speak words of comfort, sometimes say prayers, and just generally offer a ministry of presence. Last week I was called to vigil with a patient I'll call "Lillian," whose daughter badly needed a break. Lillian was actively dying, and was sleeping soundly with the assistance of morphine. Her daughter was so happy to see me, because she had not gotten away to eat anything since breakfast. She told me some other family members might stop by briefly, a...