Meditation: Community

Buddhist stupa in Grafton, NY. September 2004.

Recently I participated in the funeral mass for a dear choir friend, a fellow bass voice. Dennis marked 85 years, all of them vibrantly alive, until his death on December 7th. I’m not sure why five weeks elapsed before the funeral mass. I surmise the travel logistics of a few participants whom he hoped to have at the mass played a large part: the homilist had attended seminary with Dennis. Likely he wanted everyone to be focused on Christmas, not himself. He was like that. I’m not writing this about Dennis and the funeral, however.

One theme predominated in the mass. Dennis believed with every fiber of his being that being Christian meant fostering community in all its aspects: helping the poor; supporting the rights of those downtrodden; welcoming the immigrant; supporting the abused, the sick, the dying; and being open and unjudging to all with whom he came into contact. “Sounds almost priestly,” you might say, and you would be correct. Dennis trained for the priesthood and in the mid-1960’s he received ordination into the Roman Catholic rite as a priest. Though he left the priesthood soon after joining a parish, he never stopped being a spiritual advisor.

He told me two years ago that in the first years of priesthood he became disillusioned with the elder priests he encountered. They had no regard for their parishioners as equal members of the body of Christ; they spoke condescendingly and disparagingly of them. He left the priesthood, married, worked in human relations and later as a small businessman, fathered children, and retired to the Raleigh area. But this also isn’t why I write these paragraphs.

Canning examples at Hancock, MA, Shaker Village. September 2004.

After you buy a specific model of car, you suddenly start noticing the same model seems to be driven by every fourth or fifth driver you meet on the roads. In the weeks surrounding the funeral I keep encountering references to community, descriptions of community, lessons about community, and prayers about community. It’s difficult to convey the import of this. It’s not like hearing the new buzz word of the month on everyone’s lips. The concept of Community is fraught for Christians, I’m realizing. Dennis knew this. His belief in community basically formed the third rail of his life’s train, the one which carries the current. He accepted everyone, although he had a few choice words for those at the altar (the cathedral rector acknowledged in his closing remarks that he heard these choice words more than once from Dennis). This stirs me, agitates me, scares me. If my Final Judgment (in whatever form that may take) will rest on my participation in Community, I’m screwed.

I’m not a “reaching out” kind of person. Introspective might be the wrong word, but I’ll go with it. (Borderline sociopath? Asocial?) I’m quite content left to my own devices, have been since I stood on the threshold of puberty. As a young man I often spent my weekends without uttering any words except to my cat. I can recall needing to prime my lexical pump to talk to people on Monday. My poor wife has learned to her detriment that her husband at times seems to need no one, and has learned to nudge me to do a few things to fulfill her need to be an Actual Social Being. One of the best things to happen to me occurred when I quit being a reporter/editor for weekly newspapers and entered teaching. Teaching requires constant talking and fostering a learning environment. My methods professor likened it to performance—well, technically to being a performer in a circus. I concur. Ultimately I learned playing in outgoing roles does not an Outgoing Person make. Solitary is still solitary; introversion will out.

As I think about the logic of fostering community (the Body of Christ, after all), I contemplate some other close friends and family, wondering about their ability to balance their need for seclusion with the compulsion to reach out to others. My Raleigh compatriot calls himself an introvert, but he’s a different one than I. In restaurants he specifically learns the server’s name and uses it. He makes it a point to engage other patrons at our local watering hole. Where I would banter superficially with a bartender and local barstool denizens—teachers become glib, after all—he engages in Real Conversation. Once we were outside Chef and The Farmer, a restaurant in the small city of Kinston, NC, and made famous to those who watched A Chef’s Life on PBS. A cameraman had his rig set up on the front walk, taking scene shots apparently for the show. In that situation I’m content to observe, “Hey, look, they’re filming for a new episode,” and maybe giving the cameraman a thumb’s up. My buddy walks straight up to the guy to verify he’s shooting for the show and to tell him how much he likes the show. Heck, maybe more, I don’t know. I didn’t accompany him. He traveled to Guatemala several times with a group from our church and rounds them up on a monthly basis for dinner. He makes friends of the people he encounters on his morning walks. I encounter people on my walks too, perhaps the same ones since we live in the same neighborhood. I know them only by face. They know me by my curt nod or an energetic “good morning!” and nothing more.

Shaver Pond, Grafton Lakes State Park, Grafton, NY. September 2004.

My father also followed this model. He never said, “I’m an introvert,” but he sure seemed to be happy enough being by himself most evenings. (I’m sure it wasn’t to get away from his two smart-aleck boys or the TV playing shows he didn’t like!) He also made sure to know all of his neighbors and greet them, boisterously, whenever he saw them. He really shone at church on a Sunday. As a PK (preacher’s kid) he truly believed in the community of Christ. He also grew up embarrassed that his father the minister couldn’t remember his parishioners’ names. Apparently he swore to never let that happen to him. Me? It’s almost like I try to not learn a person’s name—they bounce off of me like sleet on a tin roof. As I near eight years in this house, I don’t know the name of my neighbor to the south. The one across the street is named Tom…I think. I’ve only spoken to him once, when we first moved in, and I’m pretty sure he realized I was going to be “one of those” who didn’t interact with his neighbors. My neighbors to the north moved in shortly before the pandemic. I met the husband when he started to take down the fence between our yards. I know his name. We talk at length a few times each year. It helps that he’s open and friendly, plus he’s Roman Catholic also and his wife teaches music in Catholic schools. Obviously, though, I’m not my father.

If I were to compare myself to someone, it would be the talk show host Johnny Carson. I read somewhere he claimed to be an introvert who could interact conversationally quite well, but who preferred being alone. I fear Carson’s notoriety for being a person difficult to be around also applies to me. Me? I’m starting to grapple with the idea I may have to up my game if I want to be called human. I’ve always identified with Sheldon in Big Bang Theory, not because I’m a super-genius but because I tend to think I’m smarter than those around me and I find interacting with people painful at times. Perhaps I should have led with that. I think we can support and grown community in many different ways, but at the same time I’m going to work a bit harder on learning names, being a bit more accessible, reaching out.

A note about the photos: Community shows in a variety of ways. In September 2004, my parents visited us in upstate New York where we lived east of Troy in the foothills of the Berkshires. Tucked at the end of a long dirt road, a Buddhist nun lived at and attended to a stupa. I’ve no idea how it came to be, but find the juxtaposition interesting: feeling connected to all beings, they built a stupa in a township of fewer than 2000 persons. By contrast, the Shakers may have drawn themselves into a segregated community, but were much more accessible to the general public. Mostly, though, I think on my father who looked constantly for people to connect with. The calm stillness of a pond might represent his interior, but he always made time to foster community and strengthen it…as described above.

My father, Howard Pilcher, taking photos in upstate New York, September 2004.

Kinglet

I finally identified a little bird this morning which had been zipping all around our feeder while ignoring it all the same. He mostly seemed interested in getting into our kitchen. The cool thing about him is the crown: when a bit agitated, he flips it up as it is in the photo above. When he’s calmer, it’s down and more difficult to see, as shown below.

Ruby-crowned kinglet with crown feathers in the ‘down’ position. Both photos shot less than 60 seconds apart. Unless you are looking down at the bird, the red crown is very easy to miss. At first I thought I was looking at a warbler. (The bird is barely 4 inches long.) January 2026.

My yogi

What’s wrong with this picture?

Our yard on the left, neighbor’s on the right. Photo is unretouched. January 2026.

Last October we paid to have our back yard replanted with plants native to North Carolina, the American Southeast, and the Atlantic seaboard. As in colder climes, the vast majority of native plants drop their leaves and enter dormancy for the colder winter months. We also “leave the leaves” which allows them to decompose into the soil as they should, creates cover for the little creatures to stay warm (and avoid hawks), and supports the lives of little bugs which in turn provide food for the ground-feeding birds. Thus, the predominant color of our back yard and our front yard is brown.

Our neighbor’s yard represents most yards around us. The green of English ivy covers the ground and the trunks of the trees. Saplings of non-natives take advantage of the warmer winter weather much as sunbirds head for Arizona or the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. Some keep their summer foliage—no need to drop leaves and protect a plant conditioned to far colder climes. It’s not that leaves fall only in our yard; there’s an oak or two and some poplars over there. It’s that the ivy manages to conceal somewhat the leaves in my neighbor’s yard.

In winter, therefore, brown is good, and green is at best questionable. (Before my southern readers chime in, yes, there are plenty of Southern evergreens, but not many around here consciously cover their yard with them.)

Our natives, once established, should have staying power also. It’s kind of defined by the word “native” is it not? I will need to wage constant war, though, on the ivy, the Virginia creeper, the japonica, and the various saplings which will inevitably attempt to broach the property line. It’s a battle I freely take up. For the time I live on this speck of the Earth, it will bring forth those plants which grew here naturally and nurtured the birds, mammals, insects, reptiles, and amphibians which depend on them for healthy populations.

moon, fire, and trees

One day from full, says the Moon. What’s this silly stuff about calendars? New Year’s Day, 2026.

We gathered with friends to welcome the New Year with simple Southern fare: ham, boiled potatoes, boiled cabbage, biscuits. After loosening our creaky social graces with applications of Belgian beer, my Southern brother of a different mother lit up his new chiminea and we talked of things ponderous and trivial. The moon stared us down, afraid to blink for missing our ephemeral lives. Oak hissed and crackled in the fire.

Radiating warmth in all directions. New Year’s Day, 2026.

At one point we paused to look at the pretty effects of his neighbor’s light pollution…

Finally we admitted our backsides were too cold and our frontsides were getting quite toasty. We headed indoors, while tarted up versions of the trees danced in our heads…

Merry Christmas 2025!

Christmas lights through the front door. Christmas Day, 2025.

“Oh my! I don’t usually have more than one, but it is the holidays….” [cue hysterical laughter]

Merry Christmas, y’all! I wish you all the meaning of the day. For the Catholics, and the similarly aligned, we look forward to the 12 Days of Christmas beginning today. To our fellow Christians, we celebrate fraternally, the incarnation of God, the Creator of the Universe. To the rest of America and those who choose to throw in with us, this represents a time vaguely associated with the Solstice that causes the Northern Hemisphere to contemplate the brightening of days, the eventual advent of spring, and a time where we think about love of our fellow humans, the idea we may achieve peace on Earth, and that individuals will find the emotional connection we all seek. (I’m sorry, Southern Hemisphere. I haven’t got anything for you on this one. The days will grow shorter. The warmth will fade away. And in your coldest times you will not have the bright spot of Christmas to look forward to. I’m feeling your pain.)

Our personal Christmas has been especially meaningful to me. My best friend in the choir, a bass like me, died 18 days ago. An ordained priest who left the clergy to pursue a ‘worldly life’, he never stopped being what priests aspire to be (if they are true priests): the lowly shepherds who gather the sheep who stray and return them to the fold. I suppose he never will be venerated, beatified, or sanctified, but he established a spiritual North Star for me, and his death so close to Christmas has rocked me emotionally and spiritually. That I say this day’s mass proved especially moving to me makes me think that the last time I felt this way occurred in 2019 exactly two months after my mother died (and I retired). It’s funny how we imbue meaning into the same annual ritual liturgy.

I approach my faith through music and musical ministry. Thus, the Midnight Mass this year meant I dwelt in the choir loft yet again despite thinking, “How much longer can I stay up until 2 or 3 a.m.?” I reference my comment to my recently departed friend from the bass section who last year at 84 found it a requirement to be in the loft on Christmas Eve, preparing for the first hour of the birth of Jesus. He could not stand for more than 10-15 minutes. He exerted himself to climb the steps to the top riser where the basses reside. Contrary to offering complaint, he climbed with a smile on his face. I kept thinking about him, about my slight musical retreat from participating in what my vocal gift allows me to do, and about how this night above most others enriches the spiritual experience for those who attend but Christmas and Easter.

We presented 45 minutes of music from a brass quintet (plus tympani), two organists using our CB Fisk Opus 147 pipe organ, and the two dozen voices of our choir. I invite you to follow that link to the page describing the organ. It inferentially mentions our cathedral space which remains one of the largest Roman Catholic cathedrals in America, providing space for about 2,000 worshippers.

Holy Name of Jesus Cathedral, Raleigh, NC, preparing for Midnight Mass 2025. Two transepts exist to both sides of the altar area. The choir loft, foreground, shows the camera which will transmit a YouTube livestream, the seats and stands for the brass quintet, and is taken from the top riser where the basses sit. Christmas Day 2025.

Not unusually at Christmas, parishioners packed our cathedral.

Here’s a not-unusual detail for folks like me:

Spend Christmas Eve morning planning the logistics for the next 48 hours.
Align meal times with reality
Take a nap for 1-2 hours sometime during the 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. timeframe
Shower a second time…perform necessary personal grooming functions
Continue day to its normal concluding time (for seniors), but have dinner just a bit later
About the time one would prepare for bed, prepare to go to church instead
Get to church at 10:45 p.m.
Participate in pre-mass musical program from 11:15-midnight
Support the mass with musical ministray/leadership
When mass ends at 1:30 a.m., engage in social chat, drive home
Arriving home about 2 a.m. or later, and realizing you are far too jazzed to go to sleep, crack a bottle of “Christmas cheer” and calm in the alcoholic-existentialist manner until approximately 3:30 a.m.
Go to bed
Wake on Christmas Day about 8:30-9:00 a.m. Absolutely beat, and with no more than 6.5 hours’ sleep (usually more like 5.0), stumble through a few hours before saying, “Screw it, I’m having a beer, dear.”

There you have it: a raw, day-after download of what this (and many other) Christmas has meant to me. I wish you and yours the merriest of the day. Here on the east coast of the United States, about eight hours remain on Christmas Day. I hope however many you have (or had), they will be/were meaningful.

three coins

perhaps a three-week hiatus demands a post about Three

Every morning after I’ve got pants and shoes on, I grab “stuff for my pockets” which varies depending on whether I anticipate going out and needing a wallet. Sometimes I don’t think I’ll need American coinage either, but I always grab a lip balm stick and three coins:

Top to bottom: Eisenhower dollar, Mary Queen of the Universe, and a guardian angel coin. Oblique angle, right, shows the etching better. December 2025.

This ritual, this grabbing of physical reminders, has existed from before the morning prayer time I started recently. Because I am who I am, I consider the smallest coin first. For a period of time when people held postal mail in higher regard than now, and the Internet hadn’t become the ubiquitous realm where we encounter one another, I received a regular marketing mailer from some religious publishing house. Or maybe it was a charity looking for donors. Regardless, every mailer had affixed to its mail-in card a cheap metal coin with an angel embossed on it. “This is your Guardian Angel! Take this gift as a token of our appreciation!” the card said. And one day when yet another of these things showed up, I did. I don’t pretend to understand the exact nature of a guardian angel, but I can say with certainty there have been many times when something bad should have happened to me or when I for some reason refrained from saying something incredibly stupid, and I think a higher power might have influenced things. The coin reminds me there are forces greater than me at play in the universe, and I would do well to give them a few seconds each day to stop and appreciate them.

I picked up the middle coin in February 2013 when we visited Kissimmee, FL, spur-of-the-moment. I had a suddenly empty work calendar in my new line as contract-professional-for-hire, and Florida promised to be warmer than Raleigh. In most ways that count, it remains one of the two best times I’ve had in my half dozen or so visits. Due to the sudden nature of it, I planned little. We just schlepped around and on our final day discovered The Basilica of the National Shrine of Mary, Queen of the Universe:

Interior, shrine to Mary, Queen of the Universe. Kissimmee, FL. February 2013.

Moved, I sought a small reminder of my experience there; hence the coin. In Roman Catholicism, the Marian tradition provides an important link for humans with God. As Mother of the Son of Man, God Incarnate, Mary becomes our symbolic mother just as Jesus is our brother. Thus our reverence for our mother, just as we revere our earthly mothers (hopefully). The coin reminds me of this link, of the powerful Family of God of which I am a wayward son, and of my brother-and-God, Jesus. Powerful stuff…and all in a few seconds!

My final coin (because it’s biggest) reminds of something far less religious, but no less meaningful. My father had an eclectic collection of coins he kept in a small metal box shaped and decorated as a 1940’s suitcase complete with travel stickers on it. He popped the occasional coin into it which he thought would be “worth something someday” or just out of curiosity. The U.S. Mint first struck an Eisenhower dollar in 1971 which likely explains why my father set this one aside. It also happened to be the first dollar coin minted since 1935. To me, however, it stands in for my father. I grab that coin and think about the oddity of putting 15-20 coins in a little kid’s bank and then doing nothing with it: he never took them out and looked at them, he never spoke about them, nothing. Only when he allowed my brother and me to dig around in his chest of drawers would we get to see what this little metal box held. In a larger sense, I see that profile of a bald president and think about my father in his final 20 years. I say a little prayer that he has found peace in the afterlife, a peace which eluded him here.

These few seconds…the little things we do which ground us.

Hold-outs

I seem to be on a leaf and garden kick. Though two short cold snaps have sent 99% of the plants into dormancy (unless they’re evergreen), a few brave stalwarts instead focus on the above-average warm weather to pop one last bloom out. November 3-9 ranged 65-75F with just a dash of rain the final two days. And then the 12th through 16th blessed us with sunny days of 64-73F. Look at these little troupers:

The blue mistflower who refused to die. All of its nearby compatriots are brown. Interestingly, the broad leaf or two at the top are from a purple coneflower, also still green. November 2025.

Another purple coneflower with living on its mind. All of the originals have gone to see on the right, but no matter. Let’s make more! A nascent bloom can be seen to its immediate left (the little white spiky one). November 2025.

Black-eyed Susan: you can see dead plant everywhere but it decided to come up again when the weather warranted. November 2025.

I keep falling for you

I took a walk this morning as the newly risen sun filtered through the tops of trees. The ethereal lighting isn’t quite captured here, sadly. Nice to see the natives doing well.

American beech, a.k.a., Carolina beech. November 2025.

White oak…maybe…looks different than our white oak. November 2025.

Falling, indeed

Unlike most years here in central North Carolina, temperatures have been colder than normal and our first hard frost occurred this morning. The above photo from November 24th last year, shows the glory of our lone non-native tree to survive The Culling, a.k.a., the landscaping project of 2024-25. This year it still retains red leaves but they are dulling. Dogwood, which in years past held onto their dusky maroon-colored leaves, now stand bare, attesting to the weather with a solitary leaf here and there. Plants closer to the ground now are yellowing and soon will follow the trees.

On the personal front, fall seems an apt term the past two years. At this time last year we were winning our battle against Covid, entering our third week in its grip. This year a Covid-like virus laid me low all of October 26th through November 2nd, and its nasty little cousin showed up yesterday, an intestinal thing. (“Detestinal” thing?)

Dry, sunny weather accompanies these low temperatures, providing a yin to the biting yang of it. Our bird world changes almost overnight: the year-rounders come back to the feeders to start bulking up, others disappear, and soon birds of prey will become more prominent on their leafless perches. Last week a raven lingered in front of the house, a surprising sight.

This year brought an unusual amount of treework in our near neighborhood. Trees and large limbs fell frequently during unusually rainy weather this summer. Fearful homeowners culled trees simply because they stood near the owners’ houses. A red oak ‘shared’ with our neighbor—it has managed to grow across the property line—dropped a limb the size of a small tree onto the neighbor’s driveway in a spot which had held a car until a week or two before the limb fell. Our good friends around the corner were not so lucky, losing a vehicle when a limb fell on a minivan about six weeks ago.

NC weather continues its wonderfully contrarian ways, at least to born, bred, and experienced Northerners (a.k.a. “Yankees!” as the Southern epithet is uttered). Temperatures promise to level out and this coming weekend will rise as high as 76. Any day after Halloween which promises temperatures in the 70’s (let alone the 60’s) seems to be a gift, even after living here nearly 20 years. And the most anticipated weather event for the coming months? The knowledge that someday in our near, winter-weary future, a singular weather pattern will convince a 70+ degree day to appear in late December or January. Always a welcome respite, even if its appearance always remains a cameo.