New decade/New times?

Being born in the post-World War II era, I have certainly seen many, many things begin, change, evolve, grow and diminish in my time on God's green Earth. The changing mores of the nation, the role of women, the civil rights movement, the expansion and deflation of the space program, the shrinking of the printed news media, the growth of cable news, on-line social and news media, the ubiquitous handy-dandy cell phone which can track ones very existence at any given time; these are both a blessing and a curse of our post-modern society. So many things have evolved and changed and spun around again and again. Some others things have remained the same. One of which has got to be human nature.

The French have an expression, actually they have several. Two of which I really like. I am not a fan of "cherchez la femme" (look to the woman), but I do like "Faites attention à ce pour quoi vous priez, vous pourriez bien l'obtenir" ( Be careful what you pray for; you just might get it). But the one I am thinking about is: "Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose" ( The more things change, the more they remain the same). I think that is my mantra as I enter full throttle into my seventh decade.

So many things have changed, you might say, and I have to agree. Banking is automated, you don't have to rush to the physical building to deposit your paycheck; it gets sent there automatically. You don't have to sit around waiting for that phone call; you just take your phone with you. Well, that can be annoying, but most people have their phones with them to keep them linked and to entertain them as well. You can buy your movie tickets form the comfort of your living room and even pick out the seat you want! You don't even have to go to a store to buy shoes, shirts, pens, paper of chocolate. Just as your prescription drugs can be sent to you automatically, you can satisfy that longing for Nutella by ordering it through Amazon. Heck, I even get my vegetables and fruit delivered every other week at a considerable savings over buying the same stuff at the supermarket in my building!

But there are some fundamental things that remain the same. And the major thing is human nature. We humans are predictable creatures. One thing that never changes is that we are wont to act on behalf of our own self-interests. It is defined as "regard for one's own interest or advantage, especially with disregard for others". And, it is true for almost all of us. If we had our druthers, we'd chose those outcomes that would be good for us.

We also like to take the path of least resistance. We often go along to get along. We like belonging, and we like security. When it come to our personal welfare we just don't want to rock the boat and are often silent when other express views that we may not agree with, but seems to just not really matter in the scope of our lives.

We often let the status quo stay as it is,  especially if it benefits us. We may understand the role that "male privilege" and "white privilege" should be addressed so our society becomes more equitable.  But if we are on the beneficiary end of that scale, we might not be inclined to speak up or call it out for allowing a status quo to exist that is intrinsically unfair to a large percentage of our society.

Yesterday I took part in an interesting discussion at one o the churches I serve as deacon in the Episcopal Diocese of New York. It was about acknowledging the history of the founding of the congregation. A congregation that I have come to dearly love. It's a great community of faith, but they were struggling a bit with a charge from our bishop over the compliancy of the Episcopal Church and its predecessor, the Anglican Church in the enslavement of people of African decent. Many of our congregations whose roots are deep in the colonial history of the United States benefited from the wealth accumulated by members who were slave owners. In our particular case, we have definitive proof that a majority of the founding vestrymen, including the rector/priest/pastor, owned slaves. And we know that the skill and craftsmanship of slave labor was used in the construction of the very first wooden chapel that housed the original congregation.

So, we sat on Sunday and talked about it all. And yes, there were moments that we looked around the room and saw no one who was not a descendent of white European ethnics, no people of color in the room. Some folks noted that these events happened almost 200 years ago when their own ancestors were struggling against their own oppression. They were correct.  Others understood that slavery was definitely evil, but we could not go back and change it. They were correct. Still others mused if placing a plaque4 outside the church, perhaps near the transferred cornerstone with the names of the vestrymen and slaveholders who established the congregation, without any acknowledgement would be a hallow response. And they were also correct. So, what did we decide?

We'll continue the conversation. We'll take a closer look at our history and present a resolution at our annual meeting making an informed decision on the issue of acknowledging our past, honoring all those who helped in establishing this congregation and striving to be a welcoming community of faith. Moving our human nature to let go of the status quo, leaving the path of least resistance to others, and setting self-interest behind and think others with whom we can share and expand this community of faith.

Uncovering an unpleasant history

He shall not judge by what his eyes see,
or decide by what his ears hear;

but with righteousness he shall judge the poor,
and decide with equity for the meek of the earth; Isiah 11:4

What I like about Advent is that we get to revisit some wonderful ancient prophetic texts that still speak to us today. The Old Testament reading from the prophet Isiah is still very relevant in today’s world. “He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear; but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth”. It is the concept of “equity” that speaks to me the most.

As many of you know, our diocese has made an unusual decision looking at issues of “equity” as it relates to the shared history of the Episcopal Church in the overall nation and in our surrounding lived region. At the convention we learned of a resolution that had been tabled for almost 160 years. This resolution had to do with the complacency of many of the businesses in the city of New York in the locally outlawed slave trade. Slavery was outlawed In New York State in 1799, but not all at once. It was decreed that any child born into slavery in 1799 would become free when the females reached the age of 24 and the males reached the age of 27 making 1827 the year slavery was finally illegal in New York State. And so it was; however, this law did not prevent investment into the transport of slaves, or the refining of sugar grown on plantations that depended on slave labor, or the manufacture of inexpensive clothing to be sold in the South for slaves to wear or issuing life insurance policies for slaves with their owners as the beneficiaries. Think Domino Sugar, Aetna Insurance, and Brooks Brothers as local New York companies who gladly continued to have financial entanglements with industries connected with slavery.

An interesting result of this 1799 law was that slave holders whose female slaves gave birth to children beginning in 1800 could declare those children “paupers” and wards of the state. This would then make the owner eligible for a monthly stipend of $3.50 per child to fed and clothe them while still enjoying whatever service that child could offer the household until the anticipated emancipation date. It was a kind of informal payback to the slave owners for the loss, over time, of the labor of that young child. The governor of NY at the time, DeWitt Clinton of Erie Canal fame, discontinued this practice because it was rapidly draining the New York State Treasury.

Although slavery officially ended in New York in 1827, slave owners from other states who were visiting New York could bring their slaves with them; fugitive slave hunters could capture and return suspected runaway slaves, and ships transporting slaves were allowed to drop anchor and restock in New York as long as they did not engage in the sale of slaves while in New York City.

So, although the good citizens of New York were in compliance with the letter of the law, there was quite a bit of local activity that flaunted the intent of the law. Hence, John Jay II introduced an anti-slavery resolution in 1860 to the NY Diocesan Convention that was quickly tabled. Our last convention in November took this resolution off the metaphorically dusty table and brought it before the convention where it passed without issue. But that was not where the Bishop stopped.  He committed to setting aside 1.1% of the income generated from the Diocesan Endowment Fund to be spent for some kind of reparations such as seminary scholarships for persons of color. He also referenced the action of the congregation at St James/Madison Avenue. They had researched their history and discovered that the construction of their original building was done with enslaved labor. They have recently put a plaque on an outside wall acknowledging this contribution. The bishop asked those congregations with colonial roots to look into their history to see what they might learn from the experiences of the founding members and do the same.

His charge about colonial congregation struck a chord with me. While researching my mother’s family genealogy (Conkling), I discovered that they owned slaves, not in Virginia or Louisiana or the Carolinas, but on Long Island, more specifically in Sothhold on the North Fork in Suffolk County and in Brooklyn. In my own search, I found a bill of sale that read:

“Know all Men by these present that I, Joseph Conkling ... for and in consideration of Twenty five pounds Current money . . . sell and Convey unto Joseph & John Lloyd and to their heirs one Certain Negro Girl Named Phoebe of about Six Years of Age During the Term of her Natural Life -- Sixth Day of December A.D. 1773”. (Interestingly, the bill of sale was signed 246 years ago exactly to the day that I wrote this sermon)

I read and re-read that bill of sale. I was devastated. I wondered what happened to that child who was about the same age as one of my own grandsons. Did she survive into adulthood? Did she remain with the Lloyds on Long Island? Did she live to see the ending of slavery in New York? I have no idea. If she did she would have been 60 years old, a very old age at the time, if not she lived her entire life as the property of someone else. I only know that one of my colonial ancestors sold a child for the sum of 25 pounds sterling. As a point of reference that would be equivalent to 3,760 pounds or $4,936.50 in modern currency, less than 5,000 for the life of a child.

This knowledge made me want to revisit what I knew about the establishment of this congregation in 1802, a bit beyond the colonial era, but our roots go deeper than the early 19^th century.

Years ago when I was a member of St Andrew’s and their informal historian I uncovered the story of the beginnings of this community of faith. Ascension, at its inception, was a chapel of St Andrew’s and was established with financial help from Trinity Wall Street. It was built at the present intersection of  Richmond Terrace and Alaska Street. Many of you remember that building with fondness. It was not the original building. The first building was constructed at that site in 1802.

The tale that is gleaned from the records at St Andrew and from a book written about its history in 1925 has a wildly idyllic tale about David Moore, the fourteen-year-old son of the Rev. Richard Channing Moore, who was the rector of St Andrew’s and one of the founders of Trinity Chapel, the original name of the congregation on the North Shore. The younger Moore, who would later succeed his father as rector, loaded a horse drawn carriage with wooden planks and drove that rig to the site, unloaded it and oversaw the construction of the original foundational floor for the building. What did not make it into the 1925 history was the fact that he was accompanied by several slaves who were the property of his father, and these enslaved men were the labor that laid down that floor.

That story alone made me wonder about what other facts we could uncover about the men who helped to start this congregation way back in the day. So I turned to the John Jay College data bank called “New York Slavery Record Index”. It is a record of enslaved persons and slaveholders in the New York from 1525 through the Civil War. (even though slavery was outlawed in 1827, there were 75 known slaves being held in NY during the war) This data base revealed some facts about life here on Staten Island in the eerily 1800’s when our parish was founded.

I copied the names of those listed as vestrymen when this congregation was founded in 1802 and entered them into the data base using the census of 1800 as the point of information. The data indicated that possessing slaves was quite common among people of means on Staten Island.  Here are the numbers:

Richard Channing Moore, rector:  4 slaves

Peter Mersereau:  3 slaves

James Guyon: 6 slaves

Joshua Wright: 1 slave

Paul Micheau ( NYS senator) :6 slaves

George W. Barnes: 3 slaves

Peter La Forge: 1 slave

John VanDyke: 4 slaves

Nicholas Journeay: 6 slaves (for a total of 34 slaves)

These facts are not presented to make us feel guilty. They are presented to allow us to think about the flawed humans that created this congregation that serves more flawed human today. Here is an interesting fact. Very recently, the NY Slavery Records Index joined with St. Mark’s-in-the-Bowery to study slavery associated with the church. They believe that recognizing past injustice is a moral obligation, and also a constructive step in understanding racism and injustice today. That is a positive attitude to have when confronting a past that makes us uncomfortable. Let us take the time to think and pray on this as well.

Five borough race...sort of

This coming Sunday is the New York Marathon, and if, unlike me, this is something you can enjoy either on the sidelines cheering on a family member or a friend who has been lucky enough to win a spot in this world class foot race, or watching the highlights on the local network coverage, more power to ya! This race and others like them: NYC bike race, Staten Island half marathon, Staten Island bike race, or even the innocuous sounding Bay Street restaurant walk, drive me to distraction.

Why, you might ask yourself, should I be even the slightest annoyed with people who are enjoying a run, a ride or even a stroll in the lovely October weather? Because my street is closed for most of the day, and I am a virtual prisoner in my own home!  

Now, runners come from all over the world to take part in this event. We even meet them at the Tourist Kiosk at the Staten Island Ferry where I work on Thursdays. We had one gentleman and his wife from Finland who stopped by last week to scope out the best way to get to the starting point at the Verrazano Narrows Bridge. God help me, I had to tell him to take the ferry and get on one of those damn buses that block my personal building egress along with his wife and his whole retinue of cheering Finnish fans. I hope THEY have fun! I will be sulking on my terrace, shaking my fist, muttering under my breath, and eating pancakes...I will actually have the time to make them this Sunday.

So, in preparation for this event, today I made my own two and a half hour 'round the city touring event hitting all five boroughs in the process...well...mostly the edges of the city, as I drove from Staten Island through Brooklyn, Manhattan, and the Bronx to get to an appointment in Mount Vernon. On the way back I toured the bubonic parts of the Bronx, Queens...mostly highway, back through Brooklyn and home over the VZ Bridge. And, boy, how the place is still strangely familiar, yet also eerily different!

Across the bridge and through the tunnel up the East Side, Willis Avenue Bridge, and through the Bronx on the way up through Yonkers and onto Mount Vernon. To get home it was down the Hutch, across the Whitestone onto the LIE and the dreaded BQE, a nightmare no matter when one is on it, under the promenade and back across the VZ.

The familiar neighborhoods are there: Bay Ridge, Park Slope, Brooklyn Heights, Bushwick, Williamsburg, the East Village, Hell's Kitchen, Murray Hill, Upper Eastside (where I went to college), past the Stadium...Yankee for you who need the reference, Fordham, City Island, Co-Op City, Flushing, Whitestone, Maspeth...all looking so very familiar, yet so very different with new skinny glass apartment buildings popping up all over pointing ever upwards and casting new shadows on old neighbors. These new edifices all seem to be struggling to peer over their older neighbors to see the water, the skyline or a patch of urban green offered by something as simple as a park or even a cemetary.....any green will do.

I remember when my parents finally moved from Brooklyn to Connecticut. My Dad said he had finally gotten out of Brooklyn and had happily bought a nice condo apartment in his beloved Danbury. I said, "Pop, you couldn't afford to live in Brooklyn." It was true then, and it is still true today.

You know that old adage, "You can't go home again."? Well, you can, but you need to bring money.

Parenting the old fashioned way.....

“If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!" Luke 11:13


As I read through this morning’s Gospel, I was struck by what I thought was hopefully, a novel and interesting topic: Biblical parenting skills. In this passage we have Jesus making some rather telling observations on parenting from a man who was, as far as we know, childless. He talks about keeping the doors of the house locked up when the kiddoes are in bed. Good idea. He then goes on to talk about feeding children some interesting things: snakes and spiders. I have known some fussy eaters in my time, but I have to say baiting and switching on the dinner menu was never a good mealtime strategy.


Now, I think Jesus’ suggestions on how to parent your child are interesting suggestions in a very long line of actions on the part of Biblical parents whose own parenting skills were, well, questionable to say the very least. There is quite a list of parental behaviors that are real head scratchers, and just plan psyche damaging if we really think about it.


I mean, we have those original rivaling siblings: Cain and Abel. Now, I will grant you that Adam and Eve may NOT have had any real help or example of how to be a parent, but raising two sons who were such polar opposites could not have been easy. and they really could have used some heavenly assistance and guidance in helping these two learn to deal with each other.

Raising Cain.... and Abel, for that matter, ended up in disaster….you know how that story ended.  And that was just the beginning of a long list of parental gaffs and missteps.


Then there is Lot, you may recall him as a relative of Abraham who lived in the debased city of Sodom. The one whose wife would later turn into salt, but that is a story for another day and another relationship. Lot just did not have a real handle on what were healthy familial relationships. As he shelters three angels in his home, he offered to send out his daughters and a concubine who just happen to live with him to be ravaged by the mob that gathered outside his home demanding that he hand over his angelic visitors instead.


And then there is Abraham himself. When his wife, Sarah, realizes she is barren and unable to conceive a child, she hands over her maid to Abraham who bears his oldest son, Ismael. When Sarah’s jealousy rises to unbearable levels, Abraham sends his son and his mother, Hagar, out into the dessert with only a limited amount of water knowing full well that he was condemning them to certain death. Only by divine intervention did Hagar and Ismael find redemption and did not perish in the heat and the sand.


Abraham did not fare so well with his second child: Isaac, the child of Sarah’s old age. When commanded by God to bring Isaac to the mountain top to offer as a sacrifice, with a heavy heart, Abraham was ready to sacrifice his son, bound him, laid the him on the bed of sticks and wood on the altar and was about to plunge his knife into the boy as an angel of the Lord stilled his hand for this was a test of faith. I always wondered what kind of relationship those two had after that encounter. I am sure it had an impact on how Isaac parented his children those raucous twins: Esau and Jacob.


Rebecka, Isaac’s wife, gave birth to two very different sons in this set of twins. Esau was a rough and tumble kind of guy and his younger brother, Jacob, was more cerebral. Jacob was his mother’s favorite, and he knew it. He was smart and crafty, and at the rare age of 15 had “swindled” his older brother out of his birthright.  When their blind father was close to death and asked for his firstborn con to enter his tent for his blessing, Rebecka disguised the younger twin who was able to trick his father into bestowing the special blessing on him instead of his elder brother. This resulted in a real family feud, and Jacob took exile in the land of his mother’s birth and then wound up marrying not one, but two of his cousins….Talk about a troubled family…this one really put the “fun” in dysfunctional! 


And remember, these were the righteous ancestors of Jesus. No wonder he struggled with fitting examples of good parenting, there was plenty of questionable parenting in that family tree.


But the crux of today’s Gospel is not how poorly some parents have done in helping their children to grow and thrive. It is about our relationship to the living and loving God who has created us all and who is ready to bestow his Holy Spirit on us all. We are but mortals who struggle in our everyday lives, in our relationships with family, friends, spouses and children. We need to stop, sit quietly, breath deliberately and make the time and place for the Spirit, that the Father is waiting to give us; can find that space in us where it can dwell, grow and nurture us in ways that will help us nurture those around us as well.

Flags, Flaps, and Fighting

So, I am currently seeing someone who is an avid soccer fan. Well, actually he is a fanatic "football" fan whose understanding and use of that term is vastly different than this American-born person's. To me football is played in the fall and winter with an oddly shaped ball that looks more like a loaf of bread then the spherical shaped orb one normally envisions when making the mental connection between the word "ball" and the image that pops into one's head.

To him football is what I think of as soccer, and players run around in shorts and knock the ball around with their feet and sometimes their heads...no hands allowed. And whilst I grew up with images of Super Bowls with all the surrounding hoopla that has come to be expected on that super of all Sundays, he follows the games of the World Cup. I have heard many times how the World Series that Americans embrace is not a global event, and how the World Cup truly is, yet I still haven't given much thought or time to following what some have dubbed "The Elegant Game".  Just so you know, I don't really care about the World Series either, but I have started to follow the brouhaha swirling around the winning USA Women's World Cup Soccer/Football team more as a social, political and economic conundrum.

First of all, I believe in "equal pay for equal work", an economic dream for most women. In most professions there is still a disparity between what a man makes and what the equally qualified women makes, and that has held throughout my lifetime. The excuses I have heard as to why this happens in the realm of professional soccer starts with the argument that American men don't play professional soccer because the "big boy" sports here are football, baseball and basketball, and end with the argument that soccer is a "girl's" sport in America, so that is why the women's team is better than the men's. I know that neither of those argument hold any water, nor are they credible. But there are people that I know, whom I thought were rational beings, who have stated these and similar arguments since the women's team had such a stunning win.

Much of the swirling uproar is centered on the person of the co-captain of the American team, one Megan Rapinoe, one heck of an athlete. She has lead her team to not one, but two World Cup titles. She has been playing professional soccer for over ten years on three continents for a variety of professional teams. She is the consummate player and inspires her team mates and others to hone their skills. She has become a role model for many young women, and has earned the ire of others.

Ms. Rapinoe, besides being one heck of an athlete who has appeared in the famed Sports Illustrated swimsuit cover, is also an out and proud lesbian in a committed same sex relationship. In addition, she has indicated that she would not be visiting the White House if invited....I did think she jumped the gun on that one, since she announced it before the team won the Women's World Cup, but, hey, I think it was a very "jock" thing to do (no way getting around the sexism inherent in that phrase). If a guy made that statement, I don't think there would be as much flak about it. And then there was the flag drop and the "salute" during the National Anthem.

There has been quite a bit of very nasty and negative noise on social media about the often mis-perceived behavior of this one unabashedly loud and proud woman. I have seen folks refer to her as "Purple Head" as if that would bring her to tears...I think "ya gotta" do better than that! We have photos of her on bended knee at the playing of the national anthem...hey, were I can be found most Sunday mornings, that is an act of reverence and submission. And I don't see anything wrong with anyone taking a knee when the anthem is played, but, alas, I am coming from another viewpoint. Other folks are up in arms because they say she threw the flag on the ground and stomped on it....Stop already! The flag fell and was picked up immediately by another player. And, golly, gee whiz, she did not put her hand over her heart when the national anthem was played at the NYC parade. Well, here goes for those of you who were outraged: the hand over the heart "salute" is optional, not mandated.

So, do you want to know what the real deal is here? Dare I say it? Sexism, misogyny, and big time homophobia. Boys and girls, your prejudices are showing.

Interesting experiment...busing NYC

Nativity Bed-Sty

As a retired white woman of a certain age who grew up in a racially segregated city, I was "bused" from my white ethnic neighborhood into an overwhelmingly black neighborhood in Brooklyn, NY. Yes, the segregated city I lived in, and to a lesser extent, still live in, is the largest city in the nation: New York City. In 1957 my parents bought a four bedroom house in the Vanderveer/East Flatbush section of Brooklyn located a healthy ten block walk from the last stop of what was then known as the IRT #4 and #5 train. We had been living in the Fordham section of the Bronx in a fifth floor apartment close to where my parents had grown up. My Dad had a job in Brooklyn, and drove every day to his job along the waterfront in Red Hook. It just made sense for us to live closer to his place of employment.

We would have twice the space with plenty of room for the then seven of us: parents, four kids and my maternal Grandmother who lived with us, a backyard and a garage for my father's car! We moved in late summer, and my mother wanted us enrolled at the local Catholic school as soon as possible. But it was in the middle of the post-World War II baby boom, and seats were tight. After spending a week or two at the local public school; by sisters and I were shoe-horned into spots at a Catholic school. Only one of us would be gong to the local parish school; two of us, including my 8 year old self, would be taking a bus every morning to an underpopulated school in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, just under an hour's ride away. 

Bed-Sty, as it is lovingly known, was a neighborhood of brownstone row houses and parks that had flipped over during the post war years from a white population to a prominently black one, many of the newer inhabitants were from the South, the Caribbean or even Africa. The school that I attended, Nativity, had been built by Irish and Italian immigrants in the classic style of San Apollinare in Classe in Ravenna, Italy, a Romanesque building with a high vaulted ceiling and a replica of Michelangelo's Pieta in the back. There were two school buildings a rectory and a convent that created an inner courtyard where students assembled in the mornings and played in during lunch recess.

Nativity's school was underutilized since the shift in population resulted in a decreasing number of Roman Catholics in the neighborhood. The Diocese of Brooklyn looked at this as an opportunity of sorts, and began sending the overflow from other more whiter local parish schools into what some would consider to be "The Hood". So, like Senator Kamala Harris, I was part of a busing experiment. Unlike many white ethnic parents who balked at sending their children into minority neighborhoods and minority schools, my parents sent two of their soon to be five children into what those parents would consider to be an undesirable situation. And guess what? We thrived.

My sister who attended the local parish school sat in a classroom of fifty students; I was in a class of thirty. Her classmates all looked alike, white ethnic New Yorkers: Italian, Irish, German-American. My classmates were from all over: Hungarian and African refugees, Puerto Ricans, Afro-Caribbean, Central Americans, Asians, as well as the kids who looked like me.  We all studied together, ate lunch together, played together, and worshipped together which set us aside from other "forced" bused kids. I spent six years in a multi-ethnic and multi-racial environment, and it formed me in unmeasurable ways, ways of tolerance, inclusivity and an openness to learn and expierence new things. I developed a love of Cuban black bean soup, fried plantains and banana pudding that, thank heavens, I can usually get somewhere in this city when the craving strikes. 

That youthful formation has also resulted in a very unique lens through which I view society. In those early years all of my classmates were smart, bright, eager to learn and valued by our teachers, the good Sisters of St. Joseph. They showed no favoritism; they valued each of us for our personhood, not for how society may have viewed us. This rubbed off on each of us. We treated each other as equals, no one was better than anyone else. We were all held to the same set of expectations, and we met them. We truly liked each other and cared about each other. My expierence was an unexpected outcome in an unintended social experiment. It was an invaluable lesson in the universality of being human. We all got along; we all learned; we all valued each other as uniquely wonderful creatures, and we were friends.

Fishers of Men...and women....and children

"Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people”

As is true for many of you here, I grew up in a household where eating fish on Friday was the norm.  It was at that dinner table that I developed my love of seafood: flounder, halibut, cod, shrimp, lobster, fresh sardines and tuna, smelts…I especially loved those little critters…. salmon, trout, bass, and herring in cream sauce. It never seemed like any kind of depravation to skip the meat on Friday and enjoy homemade fish and chips,  fried flounder fillets, creamed salmon on toasted points, or the occasional lobster bisque or a cold  shrimp cocktail with my Father’s tabasco and horseradish laced sauce. I looked forward to Friday night dinner and was actually disappointed that the Church loosened its insistence of meatless Fridays in my teen years. One of the jokes in my high school days was what was going to happen to all those souls who were doing time in purgatory for eating a hot dog on Friday? I just figured they got paroled to go inside the pearly gates.

Into my married years, my husband brought along with his pool cue and train set, a full complement of salt water fishing gear. I actually think his love of fishing in the bay and ocean was a genetic throwback to his Swedish ancestors who, we found out later, owned a fishing business in Sweden. He would go fishing with his work buddies several times a year. Now you need to know that Bob only caught the fish.  He did not eat the fish, okay maybe some broiled scallops, but in his book they were not fish. And, most importantly, he did not clean fish. So one hot August day when I was five months pregnant with my first child, my husband came home from a fishing trip with a rather large blue fish. Now he knew that I liked fresh bluefish cooked on the grill with olive oil, garlic and lemon, so he thought he was doing a wonderful thing when, instead of selling the fish to the fish mongers who waited for the fishing boats to return to Sheepshead Bay, he thought it would be a lovely gift to bring the fish home surrounded by packed ice…and it was the whole magilla: innards, scales and fins.  He then opened the refrigerator and took out a cold beer and made himself comfortable firing up the grill so I could enjoy the fresh fish he had so lovingly brought home to me…the five month pregnant wife who could not even look a dead fish without feeling more than a tad nauseous. I held my nose, wrapped that sucker in a plastic grab age bag and gingerly tossed it into the garbage and brought out a nice steak to grill instead.  He never came home again with a whole fish.  He actually was happy to pay the deck hands to fillet the fish for him. It was a teachable moment, and he was somewhat teachable.

In today’s Gospel we have a fish related story as well.  Peter and his fishing crew are about to pull into port after a very disappointing fishing day. They caught nothing.  They were tired and sore, ready to call it a day and go home to sleep. Jesus instructs them to drop their nets again….nets that had returned empty. When they did, on faith alone, their nets became so full that they needed other fishermen to help them bring in the haul. Peter then exclaims: "Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!”

Then Jesus says with all authority, “ Do not be afraid, from now on you will be catching people”. Now I have to admit to you that I like the older translation “…fishers of men”, but I digress. And that is still a role that as thoughtful Christians we are called to be.  We are called to be the conduits of the Good News in our community, our workplace, our families and the world. We know we have a message to share with others, and today we can review and renew our commitment to become those fishers in our neighborhood.