I have been writing these new year’s letters for 40
years now. They’ve come a long way from the cut and paste/xerox copy days.
Thank goodness. Many of you know I rarely got those letters posted anywhere
close to New Years. For all of the problems of online services, it makes it a
lot easier to send these missives by email than snail mail.
New Year’s Eve: Silly Boys, Anxious Animals,
Old Farts
It is our custom to drive over to Cape Canaveral every New
Years to walk down the beach and assess where our lives are to be found at the
beginning of the newly arriving year. We waited until New Year’s Day this year
to do our annual walk marking New Year’s Eve at home watching Anderson Cooper and
Andy Cohen being silly in Times Square. We were proud of ourselves as old farts
who actually made it to midnight - a rare occasion these days.
Part of that decision making turned on our fur babies. New Year’s Eve, along with the days surrounding the Fourth of July, has become a challenge for those of us with animal companions. These holidays have largely become endurance tests in most neighborhoods with ongoing aerial assaults of fireworks that often last until well into the wee hours.
This year our household of nervous humans, dogs and cats
finally got a reprieve New Year’s morning about 2:30 AM. Fortunately we were
able to sleep in until 11 AM. It’s one of the joys of being retired.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m all in favor of celebrations and
have often operated out of the maxim that there is no excess like wretched
excess. But I do think all of us could stand to engage in a lot more
consideration in that celebration. Besides our anxious animal companions, there
are a number of wounded warriors whose PTSD is activated by fireworks. Like the
champagne we ingest on this holiday, incendiary celebration in moderation is
both prudent and thoughtful.
A Beautiful Evening at the Coast
As it turns out, the wait for our walk on the beach was
worth it. The beach was a bit crowded this New Year’s afternoon but with
temperatures still in the upper 70s and a nice breeze blowing in off the
Atlantic, it was a beautiful setting for our long walk down the beach and back.
Here and there lone figures waded into water that is much
warmer than normal for this time of year to stare out to the sea beyond. I get
that. Deep calls out to deep.
2021: Joys and Heartache
It’s about a mile and three/quarters walk to the pier at
Jetty Park from Cherie Down Park. On the way up the beach we each take turns
reviewing the year that has just passed. On the walk back to the car we gaze
into the mists of the year to come, laying out our concerns and our plans.
This past year was a tough one for both of us. Andy lost his Mother on the week of her 94th birthday. Since then he has made a couple of trips to Augusta, GA to attend the funeral and to help his brother begin the processing of the family estate. That work will continue this year.
I have now lost three friends over the last year to the
demon that is COVID. I admit to no small amount of anger at those who have
prolonged this misery through irresponsible behaviors. Just before Christmas I
attended the funeral of my friend, Vince Ignico, over in Inverness, who died
after a long illness. And I lost two of my beloved cats, Frida, the little
orange feral who came to me just before I retired from UCF, and Romero, my
beautiful black boy who died without warning of a heart attack at a mere 8
years old. I miss them both.
Sister Death has far too often been a constant companion
this year
But this was also a year of happy events. My Brother and I were blessed with the opportunity to be the officiants at my Sister’s marriage. It occurred in a beautiful setting in the 133-year-old Flagler hotel which is now the Lightner Museum in St. Augustine. Much of the extended family was able to attend and it was wonderful to see everyone. My Sister has married a wonderful man, Jim Hagens, and we are happy for them both.
My niece, Grace, and nephew, Cary, are both doing well at UCF and my nephew, Scott, who last year became the third generation in our family to graduate from UF, is busy studying for the LSAT. I also became a grand uncle this year when Ellie arrived, the baby of my nephew Joe and niece Annie.
The new addition to our household is a little golden girl, a kitten named Willow. We got her from an animal rescue service in the Gainesville area. She was feral when she arrived but has now become comfortable enough I can occasionally get her into my lap for petting. She is a little ball of fire on most days.
Though my travel has been greatly curtailed of necessity
over the past two years, I was able to travel to visit friends in Syracuse, NY
during a lull in the waves of the pandemic. There is something truly amazing
about the upstate New York region with its rich history of indigenous culture, its
role in the Underground Railroad and women’s rights activism. I always enjoy my
time with Bill and Fu. (RIP, Mr. Baiv)
I’ve also had occasions to visit friends in Bushnell and
Inverness, my old stomping grounds, over the past year. One of those events was
my 50th high school reunion which I attended briefly before becoming
ill and having to leave early.
I find myself busy with Zoom engagements which have allowed
me to reconnect with old friends from my time as seminarian in California and
my time as assistant chaplain at the Episcopal ministry at Florida State. Zoom
is a mixed blessing on a good day, demanding much in terms of attentiveness and
willingness to deal with technical glitches, but providing means of talking
with people around the world.
A Place for Unorthodox Souls
I continue to enjoy my work at St. Richard’s Episcopal
Church. I preach and celebrate at the main Sunday services once a month. The
fourth Sunday of each month, I officiate the Taize service at the evening
service. And every other month I am the officiant and celebrant for the
Integrity eucharist. I am a regular attendee
at Sacred Time, the contemplative prayer group, each Tuesday morning.
As apprehensive as I am about tribal thinking with its reluctance
to see a bigger picture or engage the world outside its circled wagons, I
realized at some point this year that everyone needs a tribe where they can
belong. This parish is my tribe. It is a place that values the diversity of
backgrounds and experiences that compose this unusual community. As a result,
unorthodox souls like mine have a place to belong and to offer our talents. It
has proven to be an ongoing growth experience for me to trust finally being
accepted and allow myself to be loved. For all of that I am deeply grateful.
Franciscan Richard Rohr speaks to this kind of tribe in the
prayer used for his Conspire gatherings in Albuquerque each year. In part the
prayer reads
If you are doubting, welcome.
If you are healing, welcome.
If you are angry at injustice, welcome.
If you afraid, welcome.
If you are joyful, welcome.
If you are longing to belong, welcome.
Our pathways converge and continue.
each one of us a catalyst for loving action.
We a community of saints.
Conspire.
Breathe with us.
2022: Construction, Apprehension, Introspection
The coming year will bring major changes to our lives. The
deck in our back yard must be replaced. It will be a major undertaking not the
least of which will be the moving of all the potted plants currently on the
deck and those growing along its perimeter. The potting shed in the back corner
of our lot has been without a roof for a year now. It also demands attention.
We also need to take care of our estate planning. All the
visits from Sister Death this year have reminded us of how unpredictable the
end of life can be. Better to have things nailed down, especially when you are
a same sex married couple in a state and nation increasingly leaning toward a
neofascism fueled by religious fundamentalism.
That last part constituted a major part of our discussions Saturday. I find myself increasingly concerned about the direction I see our state, country and world taking. One of the downsides of having done a lot of study of the Holocaust era in grad school is being able to see the parallels between the events that would ultimately produce fascist regimes across Europe and the events that we see around the world from India to Brazil to the Capitol of the United States. Being a man with a well-rounded education and a temperament (ENFP) which strongly focuses on the big picture over the immediate, I find myself worrying at times to the point of obsession over what I see occurring around me, powerless to impact.
I have become increasingly empathetic to the archetypal
figure of Cassandra, the Trojan priestess to whom the god Apollo gave the power
to see the future as a means of wooing her only to have her eventually spurn
his affections. Unable to retract his original gift, he added to Cassandra’s
ability to see the future the unwillingness of her listeners to take seriously
Cassandra’s warnings. On occasion I think I understand on an existential basis
what Cassandra experienced. Increasingly, as I allow my early morning struggles
with demons of worst-case scenarios to inform my online postings, I sense that
they are largely avoided or dismissed.
Even so, I have a foreboding about the coming election year
which by all indications is going to be brutal. In a desperate race to the
bottom, I sense the tenor of these zero-sum campaigns will be Machiavellian in
nature - whatever it takes to win regardless of its ultimate costs to all the
parties involved. But the larger picture I see emerging from the campaign to
enact widespread voter suppression laws and the stacking of election
commissions, courts and state and local governing bodies across the country all
point toward an incipient failure of our democratic system and the potential rise of
authoritarianism.
In all honesty, that terrifies me.
These are some of the demons who come to visit at 4 AM
these days. Given these possibilities, I think the only way I am going to be
able to make it through this coming turbulence is to simply back up a bit from
public engagement.
Numerology says this is a seven personal year for me, a
time for reflection, meditation, focusing on my own inner depths. Most of all
it is a time for healing of wounds. Over the past few years, I have come to
realize that I carry a lot of undealt with injury to my soul from my 68 years of this unorthodox life I have lived. In order to attend to that, I will need to turn my attention and energies
inward, a move that is counterintuitive for this life-long extravert. That will
mean less social media, which generates anxiety, and a more limited exposure to the news.
That’s probably good news for the ongoing projects I am
working on. My seminar in which we have been reading Carl Jung’s Collected Works continues into midyear. It
has been enormously insightful thus far. I am also intent on working on my book
about my time in Inverness this year. The time has come to liberate that horde of
demons and heal those wounds. Most of all, I look forward to spending time
with all of my babies, starting with the beautiful soul that is my husband,
Andy, and spending the time that restores my soul in my beloved Jungle.
Prayers for Wisdom and Courage
Thirty one years ago this August, I was headed to seminary. Imogene, my little blue Mazda, was loaded to the ceiling with all my worldly goods for my trek across the country to my new home in Berkeley. I had no diocesan sponsorship for ordination and little idea of how I would pay for this next round of higher education I had engaged. All I knew was that it was time for me to go.
As I pulled out of my driveway at 307 South Hampton Avenue, a then popular song by Mister, Mister began to play on my radio:
“Kyrie, eleison, on the road that I must
travel;
Kyrie, eleison, through the darkness of the night;
Kyrie, eleison, where I’m going, will you
follow?
Kyrie, eleison, on a highway in the night…”
That was truly where I was in August of 1991. And those words once again speak to me as we begin this new year.
I pray for G_d’s presence in the days to come. As the prayer
from hymn writer Harry Emerson Fosdick put it, “Grant us wisdom, grant us
courage.” And as the hymn writer John Mason Neale prayerfully implored,
“O come, Thou Wisdom from on high,
Who orderest all things mightily;
To us the path of knowledge show,
And teach us in her ways to go.”
May your 2022 be safe, happy and grounded in the knowledge
that you are a very good creation of the Holy One, beloved as you are. Happy
New Year.
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Harry Scott Coverston
Orlando,
Florida
If the
unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it
religious or political, is not worth holding. Most things worth considering do
not come in sound bites.
Those who
believe religion and politics aren't connected don't understand either. – Mahatma
Gandhi
For what does
G-d require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly
with your G-d? - Micah 6:8, Hebrew Scriptures
Do not be
daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now.
Walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are
you free to abandon it. - Rabbi Rami Shapiro, Wisdom of the Jewish
Sages (1993)
© Harry Coverston,
2022
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1 comment:
Very nice.
It's good to see that - for an academic - You still do know how to talk to a normal human being!
Happy New Year Harry!
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