Here's the Deal

I am ridiculously happy. I love that I am in seminary. I love that I am studying spiritual direction. I can hardly believe that my life is where it is.

But it's 1:00 am and I've been more or less doing Greek since 3:00 this afternoon. With a break to copy some other material I should have also read, and a shorter break to finish my application for CPE this summer. Otherwise: Greek. I ran into my professor as the library was closing and she spent half an hour trying to help me sort out the muddle I've made, but it's pretty hopeless. And people keep saying: Are you doing participles yet? The ominous dark hour before dawn still lies ahead.

So here's what I would say if I were going to blog for the next four weeks, which apparently I'm not:

Life is good.

Greek, not so much.

Oh, and one more thing. After six years of teaching in a Jewish school, I tend to avoid using Jewish texts to anticipate the events related in Christian texts. But I do make an exception, and the time for making it is just about here:

Isaiah 9:2.

Carry on, and immerse yourselves in Advent.

Poetry: Remembering to Open My Eyes

One of the things I resolved when I came to seminary was that I would keep up with my reading of non-required material. I knew that that would be a difficult goal to achieve, so I aimed for poetry as my daily sustenance -- short, contained, manageable.

Even that minimalistic objective proved impossible to meet as I sank into the mire of Greek. But here I am, it's the first day of a new quarter, and I am optimistic again.

I've been reading Mary Oliver for a long time. It helped that several years ago both my daugher's English teacher and the professor who was to become my spiritual director were enamoured of her work; she kept popping up, all over my life.

I don't know of anyone who better captures the sights and thoughts that accompany me on my late autumn walks around the Little Lakes, where I spent a considerable amount of time over the past vacation week. Add to them Lake Chautauqua, along which I also walked at both midnight and early in the morning, and the resevoir that is my usual destination here, and you get a very Mary Oliver time of year.

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Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Clarence Stewart

Redheads Lifting in Fog

More Thanksgiving

Chapel of the Good Shepherd (Episcopalian)

Chautauqua Institution

I tried to upload a youtube music video but clearly I need instructions! So I'll just mention this morning at church; sermon and music entirely focused on Thanksgiving rather than Christ the King, for which I was primed. But the music was all favorites, and I was sorry that I had encouraged Chicago Son and Girlfriend to leave early and avoid the traffic:

We Gather Together

Give Thanks with a Grateful Heart

For the Beauty of the Earth

Let All Things Now Living

Now Thank We All Our God

Lake Chautauqua November Morning

And Happy Day After! (Friday Five)

Haven't played the Friday Five for awhile ~

1. Did you go elsewhere for the day, or did you have visitors at your place instead? How was it?

We took our two sons and one's girlfriend and went over the fields and through the woods to grandmother's house. A quiet extended family day -- the youngest cousin is about to get her license, so the daughters-in-law gazed at our children and wondered how they all grew up so fast. No little kids, no pets. Kind of wierd.

2. Main course: If it was the turkey, the whole turkey, and nothing but the turkey, was it prepared in an unusual way? Or did you throw tradition to the winds and do something different?

Just the usual turkey. And too many pies.

3. Other than the meal, do you have any Thanksgiving customs that you observe every year?

Thanksgiving isn't a big one for us. In childhood I was plagued by too many grandmothers (all those stepmothers!) and then distance became a factor, in both my family of origin and my own family, so it has always been a holiday of unsatisfactory juggling. The Lovely Daughter is with her roommate in Oregon for the third year in a row -- I suppose her tradition is more consistent than those of any of the rest of us.

4. The day after Thanksgiving is considered a major Christmas shopping day by most US retailers. Do you go out bargain hunting and shop ‘till you drop, or do you stay indoors with the blinds closed? Or something in between?

I cannot imagine going shopping on the day after Thanksgiving.

5. Let the HOLIDAY SEASON commence! When will your Christmas decorations go up?

In a few weeks. We would go ahead and do the outside lights, but we still have this fantasy that the gutter-and-soffit guys will show up one day to tear the outside of the house apart. We've been waiting for three months now. I suppose the only way to ensure their appearance would be to string Christmas lights all over the place.

We did get to spend last night at Chautauqua -- grandmas's house is too small for company -- so pictures tomorrow. For now we're home and dad and kids are about to go out for what IS becoming a tradition -- pool and pizza with other dads and kids.

Happy Thanksgiving!

William Bradford's Register of Some of the First Deaths at Plymouth

The information given below concerning the deaths of passengers on the Mayflower has been extracted from Thomas Prince's A Chronological History of New-England, in the Form of Annals (Boston, N.E., 1736; Edinburgh Private printing, 1887-1888), 5 vols. In volume 3, Prince lists at intervals extracts from "A Register of Governor Bradford's in his own hand, recording some of the first deaths, marriages and punishments at Plymouth." According to Robert Charles Anderson's three volume The Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to New England 1620-1633 (New England Historic Genealogical Society, 1995), p. 1809, this register has subsequently been lost.

November & December, 1620

During the voyage . . .

While at anchor off Cape Cod between November 9 and December 8 . . .

After dropping anchor in Plymouth Harbor, 16 December, 1620 and through the departure of the Mayflower on April 5, 1621 . . .

January, 1621

Digory Priest: January 1, "the year begins with the death of Degory Priest," . . . .

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He was one of many who didn't make it to the first Thanksgiving. Still, today remains a good one for honoring our Mayflower ancestor. I'm aware of all sides of the story -- with the complexities of motivation, willfulness, greed, and generosity that make it such a human story. But I'm also always in awe of those people who took such entirely unknown risks out of a determination grounded in religious faith.

Cemetery Yellow

I Am Growing Older

~ credited to a 17th century English nun:

Lord, thou knowest better than I know myself, that I am growing older and will someday be old. Keep me from the fatal habit of thinking I must say something on every subject and ever occasion. Release me from craving to straighten out everybody's affairs.

Make me thoughtful but not moody; helpful, but not bossy. With my vast store of wisdom, it sems a pity not to use it all, but Thou knowest Lord that I want a few friends at the end.

Keep my mind free from the recital of endless details; give me wings to get to the point. Seal my lips from aches and pains. They are increasing, and love of rehearsing them is becoming sweeter as the years go by. I dare not ask for grace enough to enjoy the tales of others' pains, but help me to endure them with patience.

I dare not ask for improved memory, but for a growing humility and a sureness when my memory seems to clash with the memories of others. Teach me the glorious lesson that occasionally I may be mistaken.

Keep me reasonably sweet. I know that I am not a saint ~ some of them are so hard to live with ~ but a sour old person is one of the crowning works of the devil.

Give me the ability to see good things in unexpected places, and talents in unexpected people. And give me, O Lord, the grace to tell them so.

(from Finding God in Our Later Years by Peter van Breemen, S.J.)

Vacation

I have no required reading for ten days. I have no Greek hanging ominously over my head. And yes, we have serious budgetary constraints this year, but I do have a favorite way of spending a free rainy day. The world out there is full of novels and poetry. So, of course, is my house but, whatever.

I am out the front door, abandoning Soccer Dad who is spending the day alternating between hallway painting and televised football.

"I'm going to Borders," I call.

"I thought you were giving up buying books," he responds.

I look at him. Silently. Dumbfounded.

And I go to Borders.

The world is full of novels and poetry. Not to mention the new James Taylor CD/DVD.

Ah, Greek is but a faint memory . . . .

Light at the End . . .

In exactly thirteen hours and twenty minutes I will have concluded my first quarter of Greek.

Not that I'm counting or anything . . .

Two Down and Two to Go: Break Time

After a morning final and an afternoon of studying and then dinner and a little more studying with four other women and then our evening final, I went to the library to study Greek without distraction. Distraction being this computer.

And I was sitting there in My Place, which is a nice-sized desk in the far corner of the reference room, next to a long and tall window, a Place I have staked out which provides me with a sense of coziness and solitude and a view of the outside world, not to mention also a view of the entire reference room and everyone who comes in just in case I need to socialize, and I was thinking, This is pretty nice.

And then I was wondering, Am I doing the right thing? Because I do love the studying part of my life, and I miss the teaching part, and I wondered, don't I want just to read and study and teach and spend a lot of my time in library corners?

And then I remembered a conversation with my spiritual director awhile back when he looked at me and said in some exasperation, Well, what do you want? And I sent him an email later and said, Well, I want everything. Sacraments teaching preaching spiritual direction interfaith dialogue caring for people planning hanging out organizing sharing I want everything.

So tonight I sat there in the library and thought Yes, I really like what I am doing right now. But I like everything else, too.

I like the library corner part of my life and I like the parts that may take me far, far from that corner. If life only weren't quite so . . . sequential.

When my children were little, I used to wish that they could be all ages at once so I could enjoy everything with them simultaneously. I guess I haven't changed much.

And so I have just addressed my sense of limitation by painting my fingernails bright red. I have to study some more, but my nails are red and I'm feeling good.

Ten Things and The Some

I put Ramoth-Gilead in the right place but Amman kind of migrated north. Yes! I AM studying my map for Hebrew Bible, but Mrs. M invited me out to play, the new moon is shining, and somewhere up north wolves are howling. So, a quick break to play 10 Things:

1. I have a group (well, two groups since we split years ago) of wonderful mom friends whom I met years and years ago online, and one of the moms whom I have never met irl just took her own Lovely Daughter on a college trip and had dinner with mine!

2. My boarding school roommate and I used to skip Sunday chapel in the spring and hike up the mountain to the school resevoir for a swim instead. None of which was considered acceptable behavior.

3. I think that the farthest north I have ever travelled would be somewhere in Norway. I know the word "travel" in Greek and I will never ever forget it, because I did on a quiz a few weeks ago.

4. The farthest south would be the Everglades.

5. I used to do programs for the Museum of Natural History that involved feeding a mouse to a great horned owl. To demonstrate life at the top of the food chain. Kids loved it. The mouse (who had already departed life at the bottom), probably not so much.

6. I have hitch-hiked pretty much the entire breadth of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. I hope my son is not reading this.

7. I think that my most miserable college experience ever was probably a certain Dartmouth Winter Carnival week-end. I hope he's not reading this, either.

8. I have seen at least five babies being born (not counting my own).

9. I am wearing, as I do about 50% of the time, the gold earrings my grandmother gave me for my thirteenth birthday.

10. When I was about ten, I amost drowned taking my first deep-water test required for canoeing class, but I am an ok canoeist now.

That's totally random, huh?

Plan for Tomorrow

Macrina

(Look her up if you need to!)

1. Sort out Amos, Isaiah, and Jeremiah.

2. Make a least five more drawings of the map of ancient Biblical lands with their 55 or so features and places, and put Ramoth-Gilead in the correct spot just once.

3. Explain the early debates about Christology, sin, grace, and the sacraments. Remember everything taught to high school students about writing change-over-time history essays.

4. Rememorize (for about the twentieth time) Greek second aorist verb forms. No, you do not want to know what those are. Rememorize (for the tenth time) Greek prepositions and try to remember that "on behalf of" is not the same as "from." (Frankly, I think my professor is thrilled just to see me recognize that a word is a preposition; which one is not so critical.) Memorize (for the first time) the changes in the perfect verb stems. Do not waste time wondering why they change.

5. Try to remember that when Greek sentences are missing words, those words are usually either nouns or some variant of the verb "to be." Yes, something of a problem, to have either the noun or the verb or both missing.

6. Take a long walk. Really long.

7. Go here. Maybe several times.

8. Ay-yep. Finals week.

One Family, Three Branches

Sarah and Hagar

Our church's adult education program is taking a close look at the Biblical text -- and at how we engage with and study it -- this fall. One aspect of our approach has been to look closely at the stories of Abraham, Hagar, Ishmael, Sarah, and Issac. A few weeks ago I led a class focused on Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar, and the next week the husband of one of our pastors, a professor of religion in a nearby university, led a class on the story of the binding of Issac. We reminded folks that we should take nothing for granted, as these are foundational stories to Judaism and Islam as well as Christianity, and today we began a two-part panel discussion to bring those perspectives to the fore.

One of the very best things about my life is how many people of different traditions, faiths, and experiences have wandered through it and become my friends. Talk about gratitude (for which, see previous post)! -- I'm not sure how I have stumbled into such grace, but I do count it as one of the great privileges of my life that it is packed with such a diverse crew.

And so I'm not sure which gave me more delight today:

Was it introducing our speakers, both of whom I know from numerous previous encounters? One is an Orthodox Jewish woman -- Ph. D. scholar of Bible and philosophy, and mother of two of my former high school and middle school students. The other is a Muslim imam -- professor of Islam and Arabic at various institutions, and former professor of mine in a Catholic university.

Was it offering the opening prayer, knowing that we were embarking upon a challenging class and that probably numerous people in the room were experiencing some degree of discomfort ~ not least among them our speakers, who had never met each other and were surely wondering what to expect?

Or was it watching our two guests walk down the hall together after class, engrossed in conversation about Egyptian and Turkish soap operas?

Some days my life is completely terrific.

Good Things on a Saturday

My friend Lisa frequently posts entries listing Ten Good Things in her life. Lisa opened a restaurant awhile back -- a fine restaurant which Soccer Dad and I have, in fact, visited, since we make the trek to Oregon on occasion -- which means that she faces a myriad of challenges, and her Ten Good Things reminds us to look for the good that co-exists with the misery.

RevDrKate over at Prairie Light is posting daily expressions of gratitude during this month of November. She entitles them NaBloPoMo and I don't know what that means, but the idea is clear.

And me, what have I been doing? W-H-I-N-I-N-G. I realized last night that my posts have begun to sound like some of the letters my grandother used to receive from friends who would enclose lengthy descriptions of their latest tribulations in their Christmas cards. Most of them had to do with broken hips and the consequences thereof. I don't want to minimize the trials associated with broken body parts, especially as experienced by very old ladies, but I do want to get on with it in my own life. Herewith, then, without further ado, a list of people and things Gannet is grateful for at this very moment:

1. Soccer Dad, who has without complaint taken over huge areas of our lives that used to lie within my domain, and has done so with utter grace and calm. The bills are paid and the front hallway is plastered and half painted. (OK, fine, plastering was never in my domain. I can admit that.)

2. The Lovely Daughter, who has become a friend (to me) of compassion, common sense, insight, and good humor.

3. My brother, who calls me every few nights, always full of concern and encouragement.

4. The Jesuit friends who offer me gracious and safe harbors in which to share my life of prayer with all of its attendant joys and disappointments.

5. The still-yellow leaves out there; the skies are gray today, but the earth in my part of the world is enveloped in yellow.

6. The friend of twenty years who gave me a stunningly beautiful fish pendant to see me through seminary (we hope!).

7. The fact that some of the best Italian restaurants in the world are a short walk down the hill.

8. This very cool photograph of myself that I found online this morning when theoretically I was studying Greek contract verbs.

9. The existence of Chartres Cathedral.

10. Same for the Atlantic Ocean.

Grace abounds.

Bad Karma?

One wonders.

Overall, I feel SO much better. Except . . . I seem to have broken a rib. Coughing. Rather painful. So painful, in fact, that I almost drfited to sleep mopping the kitchen floor.

I am home studying for finals next week. I googled "broken rib" and see that I can expect it to take six weeks to heal. Because, unfortunately, one has to keep breathing ~ so ribs get no rest. I'll be through the next set of midterms by then. In fact, I'll be home for Christmas.

I've been thinking that I'd like very much to be on retreat at Guelph. Instead, I am about to crawl into bed with my Greek and history materials. A photo will have to do.

Feat Day of St. John Lateran

Today is the Feast Day of the Lateran Basilica of St. John in Rome.

True enough, Protestants don't officially celebrate Catholic feast days. But that's no reason not to take advantage of them to explore some history, and the many-centuries history of the Lateran is fascinating. Probably all (if anything) that most of us know about it has to do with the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, when the doctrine of transubstantian was affirmed. Here's some more.

The World and Us

One of the parts of parenting I have most enjoyed is the way that my children have taken to worldwide encounters.

Things don't always go perfectly. There was the flight to Paris scheduled for 9/12/01. There was the flight from Barcelona through London the week-end that all hand luggage including cell phones were banned and the ATM machine somewhere in Spain consumed the card. There have apparently been some misadventures which have not been fully elaborated upon to me. There is the current visa snafu that may prevent the Lovely Daughter from getting to Prague in January, at least on the day she is planning to get there.

But mostly: good stuff. The Lovely Daughter's west coast university incorporates an international Japanese university, and this semester she has a job as a program planner and co-ordinator for special events for the Japanese students. Among other things, her not-quite-five-feet-tall self drives a 14-passenger van for field trips -- which apparently include quintessential American destinations such as pumpkin patches.

I'm guessing that size-wise she blends right in , but her blond hair and blue eyes mark her as the odd one out!

Off Balance

Sometimes I wonder whether seminary is really a younger woman's call.

Some of the more difficult aspects of going off to seminary in my 50s are things I had not even considered, but in the wake of my previous rant, I've been thinking about them.

I have lived in the same house for 24 years, had the same group of close-knit friends for 20. We can say what we want to one another. We have been known to irritate, exasperate, infuriate, and hurt one another -- but we can be who we are and know that we are the people who stand together when a child is in trouble, when a parent dies, when disaster of any kind strikes.

At seminary, everyone and everything is new. I am building relationships from the ground up, and I am SO out of practice. And during the week it's 24 hours a day. When you start a new job, with the attendant requirement for adapting to a new culture, you still return at night to your own house, your own family, your own friends. Not so for me this year. My opportunites for self-expression are considerably more limited than what I am accustomed to. Excellent practice, no doubt, but terribly difficult.

I have had a certain amount of control over my daily life for years and years. Last night I mentioned that to a friend, herself the mother of three young children, and she said, "Are you crazy? Have you forgotten these years?" I laughed and pointed out that she pretty much sets her own schedule, and if things spiral out of control, she can reel them back in. (Of course, I am talking about normal, everyday life here, and not about the days when you have to race to the ER, or cope with a squad car in the driveway, or listen to the "I'm pregnant" announcement.) Even as a teacher -- a rigidly-scheduled life if ever there was one -- I could take a personal or sick day if I needed or really wanted to be somewhere else. Now I'm the student, and I can't do that. School continues onward whether I am there or not.

And -- and I admit it, this might be the real kicker -- at seminary, I am at the bottom of the heap. In my regular life -- oh! wait! seminary is my regular life right now -- my friends and I have become the people in charge of things. Not necessarily by design -- we're just OLD. I can get you divorced or run your classroom or plan your program or make your presentation. I have been involved in all kinds of school and community and church enterprises. At seminary: who cares?

Oh -- one other thing: the education, at least in the first year of seminary, is clearly designed for a younger mindset. Lectures and memorization. The professor is the expert. We are the sponges. Period. Except that the middle-aged (or older!) brain no longer functions much like a sponge. More like a sieve, one might say. I'm sure there is a more flattering analogy, but of course I can't think of one at the moment, because the sieve function is in full swing!)

(My spiritual direction program is quite different. Most people are in their 50s, a couple of them younger, several older, and we draw naturally on our previous education, undergraduate and professional, and life experiences in our seminar discussion and bi-weekly papers. A very different way of learning a tradition and a set of skills.)

When I was in law school, the first year class was divided into seminar groups for our writing and advocacy program. In my group of about fifteen, one of the gentlemen was a physician in his late 30s. The rest of us gave him no particular thought, never wondered what he thought of us -- and he did not voice his opinion. (Let's just say that I often chuckle when one of my classmates mentions something that he's been thinking about for a really long time, ever since he was 15, and I realize that he was 15 all of seven years ago.) Last night I suddenly wondered: who was that doctor, exactly, back when we were all first year law students and thought we were sharing an experience in common? So I looked him up, and discovered that when he entered law school, he had been a physician for thirteen years and was the director of a department in a prestigious university hospital. In law school he was just a lowly first year student, having to make a moot court argument as though he had never made presentations before hundreds of MDS, and having to master the ins and outs of civil procedure as though he did not already know the human body inside and out. He must have wondered, too, at times, whether law school was really a younger man's game.

I draw no conclusions here. I am tremendously grateful for this opportunity, and I am thrilled by all that I am learning (even though Greek will probably leave me dead by the roadside). There isn't a day that goes by that I am not filled to the brim with material and ideas and models for sharing in some way in the unknown future.

But it's still a shock to the system. The OLD system.

On My Mind

It is no secret that I have been in bad shape for the past month. Or that I have had something of a relapse, which led to the suspicion about whooping cough. (One of my profs had it a few years ago, she told me, and it got much, much worse sometime around weeks four and five.) Or that I am completely depleted of energy, which, coupled with my memories of experiencing a similar sequence of events, starting on my 17th birthday lo those many years ago, led to the suspicion of mono. Or that I can't stop coughing, which led my husband to say: Pneumonia. (A word, I might add, of Greek origin and therefore not possibly applicable to me, even though I do now know - sometimes - the pardigm for the Greek noun pneuma.) As far as I can tell from my online reading, the doctor did ask me a lot of pneumonia-related questions yesterday, but my answers were almost all in the negative.

All that aside: I could not begin to count the number of people who have said to me, "You're doing too much," or "You're really burning the candle at both ends" or something to that effect.

Those statements are not helpful.

I am sick because some obstinate virus (probably NOT mono and NOT whooping cough and NOT pneumonia, but just your run-of-the-mill vicious virus) to which I am apparently not the least bit immune invaded my body and, finding no resistance whatever, settled in for the long haul. That's all.

Yes, I do believe firmly in mind/body connections, and that our bodies often reflect the stresses of our minds and hearts and souls. Yes, I have been under considerable stress for the past two months. It is hard to get started in a new environment and culture when your own have been pretty stable for years and years. It is hard to start at the bottom of the heap when you are used to being the one in charge. It is hard to have to work at developing new relationships when your outer extrovert is grounded in a pervasive inner introvert. It is hard to lose control of your time and your objectives to the claims of other people and institutions. And yes, it is very very very hard to learn an ancient language for which you have no aptitude.

But you know what? I am the person to whom other people say, "How do you fit that in?" when I say that I walk three or four miles a day and have for years. I probably spend another hour (not necessarily or even usually a consecutive sixty minutes) most days in some form of prayer. I spend time on the internet and I work on my photography and I have long lunches with friends and I generally enjoy myself tremendously. I work hard, but I also play with gusto. In other words, on most days I spend a considerable amount of time attending to things that counterbalance the degree of stress with which I choose to live right now.

So please. I did not do this to myself.

And if I had, believe me, I would have chosen the place where I got mono at 17 -- Cape Cod -- as the locale!

So. OK. My temper tantrum for the day.

Greek and Blogging Invade Dream Life

Last night I dreamed that we (though I can't exactly remember whom "we" included, but my kids -- very little -- were there) were staying in a beach house in Vero that my grandparents rented for several winters. I was moving around Greek verb endings that had taken the form of giant chess pieces, a la Ron Weasley in the first Harry Potter. Not surprisingly, none of the verb endings would go where they were supposed to go and I was becoming quite perturbed.

Then I turned my attention to the six cats whom everyone was trying to lock into a room so that we could all go to the beach. I'm not sure why we needed to confine the cats, but if you know the term "herding cats," then you know that this enterprise was even less likely to result in success than the Greek chess game.

And then the doorbell rand and there was Babs! with Beatrice in her arms! Babs was all grown up, Beatrice was not, the kids were thrilled to see them both, and Beatrice's arrival put an end to all hope of herding the cats.

Greek is a torment to me, my life (the cats) is going in a multitude of directions, and I had noticed on Halloween how very much little Babs and her sister Portia look like their adult selves, but I'm still not sure how words, chess pieces, cats, Babs, and dog all ended up in the Florida beach house -- except that it was for many years a place of hospitality and rest for me, and I could for sure stand to be taken care of by my grandmother for awhile!


(Found the photos online -- they're pretty close!)

The Saga Continues

Chest x-rays.

Blood tests for mono and whooping cough and other things I'm sure I haven't considered yet.

The pharmacy is probably wondering when I'm going to just go ahead and move in.

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My academic ventures are going SO well. I am making friends and finding ways to be involved and settling in just fine.

Imagine how wonderful it would be if I could be healthy, too.

I'm going to post an autumn photo because it's still my favorite season, even if I've missed most of it.