Varieties of the religious experience from Ptolemy's perspective

Lord's Prayer story:

The Lord's Prayer story is brief and simple:  My mother was a nice person, but she was fanatical.  She was a refugee from Eastern Thrace (Turkey in Europe) in 1922, when her family (she was the oldest of five children) was forced to repatriate from Turkey to Thessaloniki, Greece, after the Greek invasion of Turkey failed.  In Turkey, her family were a Christian minority in the overwhelmingly Moslem Ottoman Empire.  Her home town, now called Kirkareli (the Turkish translation of 40 Churches) had 25,000 Turks, 5,000 Greeks and 1,000 Bulgarians, the latter two groups being Christian.  No problem, and they often traded dinners at home with Moslem families, but...   As you know from Bayview, being a minority anything is different and can lead to what others might deem excessiveness.

Anyway, My mother made me memorize the Nicene Creed in the original Greek when I was three years old.  No sweat, as I didn't learn English, in the middle of north central Indiana, until I was four or five and then at the generosity of our Quaker next door neighbors, who must have felt sorry for me.  My brother was two years younger.  Both of us were required to say the Lord's Prayer in Greek every night before bed time until we were probably eight or nine.  I can't remember when it stopped.  My dad, who was religious but mainly through the Virgin Mary (he was totally devoted to his mother, who died when he was eleven) and who as a Greek male was perfunctorily observant, religion being the province of the women, would make our prayers his last stop before bed time.  Since my brother and I idolized our father, that embedded the Lord's Prayer even more deeply.

Fast forward several decades to my '70's and a meeting with Jesus face to face coming nearer daily, I decided one night to commence silent recitation of the Lord's prayer every night the last thing before falling asleep.  This is one of the few smart things I have ever done, since in one swift act I can dispense with my duty to pray daily, I quiet myself down for sleep and I can be with my parents again in my snug and comfortable bed, which is where it all started anyway.

Out in the world stories:

Dare and I spent Monday morning (July 29, 2013) unpacking, packing and handing out food off the SF Food Bank truck at Bayview Mission.  70 minutes of this was tiring and for younger people.  By lunch, which is a Black Baptist menu, I am pooped.  I am doing better with our Chinese clients - not cuddly folks.

Tuesday evening July 30, 2013) I spent two hours in Pod B of the women's section of the SF County jail on 7th Street, 600 yards down Bryant Street from the loft.  I was with a female trained volunteer (a saint) and a 40ish male Protestant minister in a room with about 15 female prisoners.  I thought it would be a rote Episcopal Evening Prayer service, but it turns out that we were supposed to have the women develop their own ideas of what the raising of Lazarus gospel means and not have them listen to my thoughts that Martha was a business woman.  You know how good I am at suffering a female's development of anything.  I looked and acted OK, and I had no problem with street smarts, but I was way out of my element.  I will probably not be very useful at this, but I will go back a few times to see if the Spirit allows me anything more but superficial and obvious sympathy. It was explained to me that the women seem fine because they have been sequestered and clean for a few weeks or months.

Wednesday (July 31,2013 at about 6:15 p.m. I volunteered with about 10 others to serve some dinners prepared in the Grace Cathedral kitchen to former transitionals (i.e. "homeless") who have been moved off the street and into a City sponsored Tenderloin hotel, the Crosby at O'Farrell and Jones.  We have been doing this on and off for about two years.  Striking up a conversation with these folks is difficult.  They are reserved to say the least.  Serving food is no problem until you see someone who is really hungry.  Always a shock.

I suspect that my way of going about all of this, i.e., trying to build up the asset side of my balance sheet before I meet my maker like it's preparing a case for trial, isn't the way to go.  It doesn't conform to "not weighing our merits but pardoning our offenses."

Let's hope this, including the surgical instrument scrubbing down in Guatemala last April and early May, isn't all a big blunder and that it's better late than never, even if it probably isn't.