Rainey Blogs on Some Days

I sometimes like to go for a lunchtime walk at Ramapo Valley County Reservation in Mahwah. It makes me think of what Walden Pond must have been like, except at Ramapo Reservation you have walking paths worn from too many suburbanites walking their dogs and carrying the poop around in bags. Some are even wearing flip-flops while they do this! This is why no one writes a book about a place like Walden Pond or Ramapo Reservation anymore. You can't have your mind ascend to literary heights when you are carrying, or surrounded by people who are carrying, bags of dog doo-doo and wearing flip-flops. Besides that little difference, Ramapo Reservation is probably quite similar to Walden Pond. Well, then there's another thing I just thought of. Maybe the signage that prohibits horses, guns, swimming, etc. is another important difference. I think I'd like to take it back. Maybe it's not like Walden Pond after all. Maybe the progress of civilization from traversing amidst raw, ...

This is the story of a friend who became an Episcopalian priest due to a medical condition he did not know he had. I have written it as he told it to me while we were sitting at the Jackson Hole Diner in Englewood, New Jersey. I never thought my Greek studies in seminary would prepare me to understand the illness that my doctor recently diagnosed--agoraphobia. The Greek word agora means “marketplace.” The Greek word phobos means “fear.” Put them together and you end up with "fear of the marketplace," or crowds. It wasn't a problem early in my ministry because I pastored small churches of 20 or 30 people. I dealt with the Saturday anxiety leading up to a Sunday as best I could, figuring it was just normal, especially because I never had my sermons done by Saturday and the thought of stepping into the pulpit unprepared made me nervous. But then I started finishing my sermons earlier in the week and I realized my anxiety was still there, so it must be something else. ...

I finally had to get rid of my 2001 Ford Focus with manual windows after driving it 144,000 miles, which from the Book of Revelation seems to be some sort of number of completion. I always had to grab the handle and crank the windows down because it did not have automatic windows. I used to wonder to myself, “Are we Americans so lazy that we need to have automatic windows where we just push the button down and the window rolls down?” Some cars only require a tap on the button and the window goes all the way down by itself. How will we ever win another war with a citizenry of people who grow up with automatic windows? And forgive this digression, but have you noticed what's happening in the airports of this great nation? Do people use the stairs? No, they ride on an escalator. And they do not even walk up or down the escalator while it is moving. They step on and stand there, riding without effort. And many people who do this are even wearing flip-flops! Is it any wonder we are...