Vacation That Isn't

I don't think that a single day lies ahead in the next two weeks in which some form of scheduled interaction with someone is not required. A little much for this perceived-as-extrovert-but-not-one kind of person.

This morning I am headed out to meet with the friends with whom I used to spend every Saturday morning. That tradition broke down for me last fall when the rest of them decided to spend that time at a farmer's market and I decided that I needed to conserve my energy instead.

Tomorrow~ field ed church all morning and then the entire afternoon spent at my home church where a friend and I will be getting people started on our prayer retreat. We begin with a meeting of the spiritual directors, and then the retreatants will join us for orientation. Each of them has agreed to spend half an hour in contemplative prayer and half an hour meeting with a spiritual director over the next five days -- quite a venture for Presbyterians! My co-leader and I had hoped to be solely engaged in the organization of this one, but the numbers and schedules haven't worked out that way. It looks like I will be meeting with two people each evening, so in this case I am conserving mental energy ahead of time. It doesn't sound demanding, but listening attentively to someone and trying to follow her prayer life for several consecutive days is exhausting!

Monday ~ I am meeting with someone who is planning a year-long Ignatian retreat in everyday life. I am extremely excited about that, but it entails a huge commitment on both our parts. Four years ago I was in the middle of my own retreat, and I am still in awe that someone else who had multiple other responsibilities was willing to meet me at 8:00 in the morning once a week to accompany me through the Ignatian Exercises. That memory and the recognition of all that changed in my own life as a result help to propel me forward when my own phone rings.

And there is a sermon to plan for Thursday, and a huge paper to write. (I didn't realize just how huge until I started it last night.)

Well. I wanted to be a pastor and a spiritual director. Be careful what you wish for, right?

My camera and its various accoutrements is sitting here next to me on the bed as I type. I am going to start figuring it out later today, and I've started a new blog under my real name for the upcoming adventure. I have no idea what will happen to Search the Sea, but I think it's time for a different approach. If you are interested in joining me over there ~ so far a title is all that exists ~ email me at gannetgirlatsbcglobaldotnet.

My Day

Got up and did a little work on a paper. It's a make-up for the midterm I simply could not prepare for two weeks ago.

Went to see the senior pastor at my field ed church. He says I seem a good deal "lighter" than I have for the past few weeks. Hmmm. Quiet Husband in and out of hospital, high school girl's funeral, father-in-law's funeral, ords, and now a friend is dying. I wonder what "lighter" looks like.

Ran some errands. Stopped to see the friend and his daughters, one of whom is one of the Lovely Daughter's BFFs since first grade. She has been coming home from DC every week-end and this time is staying into the week. The other daughter has been home from New Haven for two weeks. Life is complicated over there.

I liked it better when the girls were all little Montessori kids.

I need to pack and drive to seminary and finish that paper. I need to read several particularly depressing Calvin chapters. I need to think about Sunday's sermon.

I am having more of a reality than a denial day. Sucks.

I love what Karen said in the comments about needing to switch the channel back to denial after short periods of reality. I think I need to kick the damn set across the room.

Sadly Connected

Year before last when she was applying to high schools, one of the girls my husband had coached in soccer for several years wrote an essay about how much he had influenced and helped her as a player, and how sorry she had been to hear that he had lost a son. It was an unusually lovely and sensitive essay for such a young woman.

She died a couple of days ago -- a stunningly beautiful, loving, and talented 15-year-old. I still don't know what happened, but apparently it was very sudden.

I am beginning to think that it is the rare family that is NOT haunted by the death of a child.

Happiness?

It seems that among the things to which those of us in some considerable pain must resign ourselves are the well-intentioned efforts of (our?)(Job's?) friends to urge us to reconsider our potential for happiness. Last fall, in the wake of one such conversation (full post here), I concluded that:

<<to say that the point of life is "to be happy" renders our existence virtually pointless, while the alternative, "to know God," offers us dignity and significance. If all that is available to me in the face of the death of my child is "to choose happiness" ~ well, that seems to me to represent the epitome of triviality. However, if knowledge of God ~ which would also mean knowledge of love, knowledge of ways to remain present to those I care for, knowledge of my life having some purpose ~ remains a possibility, then there is a point to life. >>

Today, Tim Muldoon, a writer over at Ignatian Spirituality, offers the following:

<Finding Happiness, which is perfect for those of a resolution frame of mind. Written by a Benedictine abbot (of Worth Abbey, in Sussex), the book looks at the development of the philosophy of happiness in the West, from the Greeks into the monastic period of the Church, focusing on the Eight Thoughts (acedia, gluttony, lust, greed, anger, sadness, vanity, and pride) which get in the way of happiness. Remove the eight thoughts, he suggested, following the 4th century monk John Cassian, and you remove what makes you unhappy.

As a historical note, when Ignatius wrote the Spiritual Exercises he was using a tradition that was already long established in monastic history, so what Jamison has to say about happiness is very much in the same vein as what Ignatius was aiming for. The idea is common in the Church Fathers and Mothers, Aquinas and the scholastics, and Ignatius: remove sin so that God’s grace may work in your life. That’s happiness. (Not necessarily pleasure–they all followed Aristotle on this point, that pleasure is passing but happiness is a way of being at work in the world. Pleasure is fine, but it comes and goes.)>>

Perhaps my own (and my friend's) confused thought was merging happiness with pleasure. I am willing to hazard a guess that in talking about "knowledge of God" I was in the vicinity of Jamison's discussion of happiness, and that what perturbed me so much about my friend's insistence on happiness was my perception that she wanted me to find a way to have some fun.

I believe that I can say with some authority that mothers who have lost children to suicide are not thinking much about fun ~ but we are focused intently on meaning of life questions. And on questions such as whether our own lives will ever again be about anything beyond endurance.

And so: I am thinking I'll take a look at this book.

AFTER ordination exams.

(And for all who have followed our miserable vacation saga: we are home and have learned that, indeed, middle-ear mess-ups can produce total life havoc. It will be awhile before The Quiet Husband can return to work, as he can't really walk or drive, but he should be fine eventually. Many thanks for all the prayers and support.)

Good People Everywhere

The Quiet Husband is home and slept quietly (!) all night.

It is not so terrible to be not the sick one but the one going in and out of the hospital when it's surrounded by palm trees and the nurses' scrubs feature patterns of sunglasses and porpoises. The care was excellent, and laid-back in a good way.

We missed a spectacular New Year's Day in the Keys; every time I drove up and down the highway I could see dozens of kayaks and fishing boats out in the blue-green-purple water under the bright sunshine. This morning it's still beautiful, but quite chilly, and no one else is up yet, so I don't know whether we're going to start the drive home or not. I'm about to head out for my walk.

The really good thing: being surrounded by friends. Friends sending good wishes and prayers via blog and FB and email, friends at home dealing with our snow-covered house, and a friend in Philly praying in front of my favorite painting.

Thanks, everyone.

RevGal Meet-Up

Well . . . sort of . . . on the phone anyway: I got to meet Mags!

She writes such beautiful sermons, and she gave me some excellent advice about my own, and she was such a delight to "meet"!

Now at least I can put a voice to the sermons, and to the friend!

Breakfast Conversation (II)

I've been mulling over another part of the breakfast conversation.

My friend said, more than once, "All you can really do in this life is choose whether to be happy." Or something to that effect.

I don't believe that the purpose of life is to be happy. Happiness is a nice side effect, and one that probably a majority of Americans experience much of the time.

Of course, a lot depends upon how you define happiness. But I think it's safe to say that in a world filled with wars, violence, starvation, deprivation, and disease, an awful lot of people do not find happiness in any conventional sense of the word.

The Presbyterian Church teaches that our chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy God forever. The Catholic Church, that it is to know and love God. My friend St. Ignatius, that it is to praise, reverence, and serve God, or (in more contemporary language), to live with God forever.

Thus those of you who are not religious and from time to time dismiss faith as a crutch or a false source of comfort might see that the purpose of our lives, as stated in major Christian creeds and confessions, is often at odds with comfort.

I can assure you that is not much of an opiate to be told, in the face of the loss of a child, that glorifying God is the chief end of your life.

But as I see it, to say that the point of life is "to be happy" renders our existence virtually pointless, while the alternative, "to know God," offers us dignity and significance. If all that is available to me in the face of the death of my child is "to choose happiness" ~ well, that seems to me to represent the epitome of triviality. However, if knowledge of God ~ which would also mean knowledge of love, knowledge of ways to remain present to those I care for, knowledge of my life having some purpose ~ remains a possibility, then there is a point to life.

I'm not saying it's easy. And I'm not saying we should seek out misery for ourselves, or view life as a grim narrative of pointless toil or senseless suffering.

But the hard reality is that to know God in the context of Christianity is to know sorrow.

It might seem, then, that it would only make sense to choose the pursuit of happiness over the pursuit of knowledge of God.

But really ~ if the choice were placed in the stark relief drawn by the worst kind of scenario, would you choose trivia over dignity and value? And perhaps it is in choosing the latter that genuine happiness lies.

Someday.




(Cross-posted at Desert Year.)

Mothers Meeting

Chris lives in a magical place, just above a Great Lake. She prepared a delightful lunch for us and then we walked down the path through the trees and as far as we could on the beach with her chocolate lab Harry, whose enthusiasm for plunging and re-plunging into the water after a piece of wood does not wane.

We shared in some detail our stories of motherhood shattered by unexpected destruction. Chris's only daughter Sarah was lost two years ago to the rocks and raging waves off the Cinque Terre, a place of utter tranquility when my family had walked there a few years earlier. We described those first days and weeks after the deaths of our children to one another and, in her case, the extraordinary warmth and graciousness of the Italian people, both when her daughter died and a year later when Chris and her family returned to the spot where Sarah died. It's now marked with a plaque and a copy of the beautiful painting of Sarah created by an Italian artist from one of the last photos (which graces the front page of Chris's blog) of that adventurous, creative, gifted girl. Chris shared some extraordinary photographs and videos with me, and we talked about what it is like to have had experiences like these and what it is like to go on, to rebuild lives in the face of mystifying devastation.

Today I began reading a remarkable book, about which I'll write more after next week. However, since my friends know I always read the end first, I will conclude for the time being with the final paragraph, which applies, regardless of the form of loss, to heartbroken but still standing mothers, walking the beach and wondering . . .

Love is selfless, firm, intense, and even dazzling. Its strength outlasts death. Its bond overpowers loss. Its courage defies inhibition. It has no end. . . . I carry with me a strength that comes from survival and a tenderness that comes from loving, losing, searching, and remembering.

Humor and Seriousness

Got back to seminary late last night and reviewed the meeting at some length with Dramatic Friend, a wonderful woman from my Presbytery whom I met last summer during CPE, who showed up here this summer for Hebrew, and who went to the meeting last night to support me.

She goes before Presbytery this fall and, after we rehashed the questions I was asked, she said she thought she'd go to her meeting and say, "Would you please ask me Gannet's questions? We've discussed them thoroughly and so I can answer them, plus ~ I can give you her answers!"

In all seriousness, and it took me awhile, but I realized something that we all should know by this time in life: it's hard to ask good questions in a situation like that. Questions that are conceptual and vast and seem tinged with a bit of an ideological bent are almost impossible to address off the cuff. (Unless, of course, you are a politican, which a couple of my FB friends thought candidacy meant!) The questions that work are those which address the specific and call for a narative answer.

It's the difference between a job interview question such as What's your greatest weakness? and one one along the lines of Could you describe a situation in the last few years in which you've made a big mistake, and how you handled it?

There I was, all prepared to talk about my life (which, yes, is a scary subject these days) and I got huge Scriptural and theological questions, the kinds that fill libraries. Do you suppose, I said to Dramatic Friend, that people thought that, under the circumstances, those would be easier?

The other reality, of course, is that some of what I was asked does not fall within my usual range of contemplation and action, which might explain why I could not translate the questions into stories upon which I might reflect. The upside is that I was reminded that there are things barely on my radar screen which are of great importance to others, just as there are matters of critical concern to me to which other people are oblivious.

Now: I really have to focus on nifal and piel!

Confusion and Affirmation

Earlier this week I spent an hour or so with the committee which oversees my movement, such as it is, toward ordination in the Presbyterian church. In another three weeks they will recommend to the Presbytery, which is our regional governing body and oversees such things, that I move on to the next step.

I don't know what other such meetings for other inquirers (that's what I'm called at this stage) are like. My last two have been mostly about my son's death and its aftermath. The members of the committee are extremely supportive and I am extremely honest. I think it has helped to keep up with my Desert Year blog, as I am not disturbed by questions about how I manage my work, what kinds of accommodations professors have offered me, how we are planning to mark the one-year anniversary, how I take care of myself.

Someone asked me at one point what I thought they should be asking me. That was a good question, and one I had not anticipated. Later, I thought of two things.

What is it like, to survive this kind of loss?

You learn to to live with constant pain. There is nothing that happens, nothing that anyone says, that doesn't remind you of something. When your Hebrew professor says in the middle of class that you can remember how to pronounce the word for "tent" (oh-hell) if you have ever spent the night in a tent during a rainstorm, your mind immediately moves to a night on a canoe trip in Algonquin Park which you have not thought about for years, and the drying-out routine the morning after, and your son's good-humored laughter. The laughter you had been foolish enough to count on hearing for the rest of your life.

As pastors, what should we know, what should we say, when we go to the home of a family where the sudden death of a child has occurred?

You shouldn't say anything, really. You should begin with, "Tell me about your child," and then you should listen. And you should keep listening, for months and years. You won't have the time, and if you have children of your own it will be too hard, but you should do it anyway.

I don't know why I didn't think to say those things. Maybe because I didn't think they were being asked. It's often hard to guess where people are in their curiosity. Most of the time, they seem to be nowhere close to the reality and, regardless of their genuine concern and interest, or perhaps because of it, it feels as if it would be cruel to fill them in. Better to live without this knowledge for as long as you can.

As we talked, I thought about my best friend at seminary. A vibrant, energetic woman, bursting with gifts for ministry. I thought, Her enthusiasm would fill this room. I should be her.

And then one of the gentlemen, a retired minister, said, We are hearing a lot of good things here, and I just want to say, I would love for you to be my pastor.

Go figure.



(Cross posted at Desert Year.)

Saturday Six Minutes of Stream of Consciousness

Hung out with some friends for breakfast this morning. In our tiny little group of five seated around the table: two deaths in the past year, a son's marriage in the past week, another son's job loss; we pretty much run the gamut. Spent a couple of hours in the late afternoon at an orientation for a week long retreat at which I will be a spiritual director. The Quiet Husband is mumbling to himself as he does the taxes. What with my being in seminary and the economy, we have taken a real hit in the past two years. Back to the retreat - the directors are Catholic, Presbyterian, and Baptist/Episcopalian. We had some great conversation. I did a lot of laundry today. I would rather have gone for a walk but I'm not sure it ever got above 20 degrees and I was NOT IN THE MOOD FOR THAT. Enough already. I finished an ethics paper this morning and sent it in and then found that after five days of nonstop work I just did not have another hour in me. I don't have much mental stamina anymore. That's it, six minutes: some good, some bad.

Status Report

I have had a few days, here and there, that have been easier. I have had parts of days that have been good.

And in spite of myself, my calendar is filling up. So I made one -- a calendar, I mean. I put all my stuff on it and color-coded everything, because I remain pretty hazy in general orientation. (Got an assignment back that said, essentially, "This would be an A paper -- for a different course.") My beautiful calendar looks incredibly efficient, and got me out the door to three appointments this morning.

And then I came home and saw that I had some messages, three of which boiled down to, "Hey, I'm waiting at the coffee shop . . . where are you?????"

Sigh.

Iona Music

Columba's Beach, Iona (July 2006)

Yesterday I went to the memorial service for a young man in our congregation who died at the age of 22 last week. I did not know him, barely know who his parents and sister are ~ but three of his cousins were long-ago Montessori preschool classmates and friends of my own children, and I wanted to let those girls and their parents know how much they had been in my thoughts all week. We ended up in the balcony, and I looked down on the pew in which they were sitting and was filled with memories of very small children racing around the playground and building the pink tower and sharing picnic lunches in my backyard ~ how can it be that more than 15 years have passed, and have led to this terrible sorrow, the one that all parents fear more than any other?

We sing a lot of John Bell/Iona music at our church, and I want to share a piece from yesterday's service. I can't find it online, but it was obviously a perfect selection to honor the memory of a young man who was just emerging into adulthood:

Here Am I

(John Bell)

In the warmth of the womb I met you,

And I called you to life through the love of man and wife;

In the warmth of the womb I met you, saying, "Here am I."

As a baby in arms I met you,

Wrapped in linen and care, watched and weclomed everywhere;

As a baby in arms I met you, saying, "Here am I."

In the tensions of youth I met you,

Whether shy or uncouth, always searching for the truth;

In the tensions of youth I met you, saying, "Here am I."

In the quiet of your home I met you,

When the door opened wide, strangers came and out went pride;

In the quiet of your home I met you, saying, "Here am I."

And wherever you go I will meet you,

Till you draw your last breath in the birthplace known as death;

Yes, wherever you go I will meet you, saying, "Here am I."

Birds and Exams

Stratoz wrote a post about birds for me the other day and I promised to reciprocate, but I didn't quite get that far that day. Today, though, with two exams down and two to go over the next two days, I thought I'd take a very quick break, startng with his reflections on eleven years ago. I have no idea why he chose that number, but I guess I will, too.

Eleven years ago I would have most likely begun the day by driving my children, then ages 12, 12, and 9, to their Montessori school, where the boys were having one of the Best Sixth Grade Years ever experienced on the face of this planet with one of the Best Humanities Teachers who has ever taught, and the Lovely Daughter was spending most of fourth grade writing cat stories with her best friend. I would have spent the rest of the workday on my family law practice, about which I had some fond thoughts as I contemplated this entry earlier today. The last thing in the world I would have imagined eleven years ago was that I would spend this morning eleven years later writing three hours worth of essays on Old Testament prophets instead of in, say, a temporary support hearing with an angry woman, a hostile man, a combative opposing counsel, and a bored judge. How times do change.

But the birds ~ the supposed point of this little piece: in the summer of 1997 we took the kids and went off to the Tetons and Yellowstone with another family for one of the Best Vacation Trips Ever. I don't think there was a Best Bird on that trip, but there was a Best Birding interaction: that moment in which Chicago Son's Best Friend asked me, "What's that book?" about my field guide and embarked upon the decade that would lead to his graduation from Cornell last spring with a degree in ornithology. He's somewhere in South America now on some kind of bird project because we stood together in a field and watched birds and a coyote eleven years ago.

I see that when I wrote about that day in celebration of his graduation last spring, I used the word "Best" rather frequently! I'm thinking that 1987 was a very good year, filled with hope and promise. Both of our families have seen some tough times since then, but there was a day with a blue sky and a light breeze and trumpeter swans, a coyote, and a Clark's nutcracker.

So Here I Am

Two weeks ago I broke a toe by stubbing it on the basement stairs. (Laundry is a dangerous business.) Not a big deal, but often painful to walk on. So I decided to go to the orthopedic guy and get it checked out and get a walking cast so I wouldn't pull apart all my other muscles in my attempts to compensate for being unable to balance properly.

Early yesterday morning while it was still pitch dark outside, I made a crash landing as I stumbled over the curb in front of Ortho Guy's office. A few minutes later I was huddled in the doorway crying (literally) and announcing that they would now have to x-ray both feet.

Toe? Yup, clean break. Foot? Not broken but badly bruised and so excruciatingly painful that (1) toe pain no longer noticeable (2) unable to tolerate pressure of either foor brace or Ace bandage (3) unable to put any weight on it (4) now in possession of crutches and Vicodin. And (5) no cast for broken-toe foot, since that is now the only one that works at all.

Results?

A little nest in a living room recliner surrounded by notebooks, laptop, dishes, phone, remote, etc.

HOURS of those real OC Housewives. (That might give you an idea of just how pathetic I am.)

A paper on Ezekiel completed and emailed.

Plenty of time to catch up and ruminate on GC35 (see previous entry).

A nice long visit from a friend; my disoriented state had caused me to forget our lunch date and so she came here and brought me brownies. It is SO nice to have friends who will hang out with you despite your forgetting about them and despite your attire -- same PJ bottoms and baggy sweater for 24 hours -- and surroundings -- dirty dishes and piles of paper.

Comtemplation on blogging. Lisa, you are right, the communities have fractured. And I find that if I visit a blog and leave comments a few times and they aren't reciprocated, I don't bother again. I also find that I am not so good at it myself anymore. But if you abandon your Jesuit-watcher Prebsyterian seminarian birder photographer mother friend, she will be slow to extend forgiveness.

Unsuccessful tries to reach the Lovely Daughter, who is visiting a North Carolina camp counselor friend here. Which, frankly, should not be allowed when your mother needs crutches to get to the kitchen.

All In A Day

The Lovely Daughter and the Charming Roommate spent part of this frigid Chicago day at Millenium Park and, when I called a little while ago, were out to dinner with Chicago Son and Delightful Girlfriend. The girls fly to London tonight; of course, we have all taken note of the mystery crash at Heathrow earlier today. All on board the aircraft are fine and the pilot is a hero, according to the news. I want there to be no need for heroism tomorrow morning.

I spent the latter part of the morning participating in a Presbytery discussion group to which I've belonged for some months -- part of our effort to bring together people of diverse viewpoints on the LGBT ordination issue so that we can get to know one another. Gospel hospitality and graciousness: it can be difficult to go to meetings or hang out online and hurl insults at people who have become your friends, so developing relationships is one way of combatting anger and recrimination.

And then I sat here and worked and watch tv for part of the afternoon. I don't think there are words to describe the experience of preparing a paper on the Old Testament prophets while at the same time watching episodes of The Real O.C. Housewives. Choice quote of the afternoon: "I'm turning forty and one of my main goals is to be as hot as I can." I'm afraid that I became briefly addicted to the show last summer after one of my friends explained to me that it was, in fact, real -- I had caught part of an episode and thought it was a satirical farce. Well, actually it is. And it's back.

And now my neighbor has been here for nearly two hours: an onstreet parking issue, houses not selling in this dreadful market, a cancer diagnosis down the street, her family's holiday visit to the daughter with the twin grandchildren in Germany, the failure of the church to maintain its property, her son's impending marriage, the noisy summer nights when the kids behind her have pool parties ~ the usual, along with the realization that we have been fortunate neighbors of one another for 24 years!

Shout OUT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So I took some Amoxicillin, and went out to get OJ, and cleaned some of the bathroom, and worked on a couple of Greek verb endings, and whined considerably about my pathetic life, and

MY FRIEND MARIAN JUST FINISHED THE PORTLAND MARATHON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

YOU GO, GIRL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

FINISH: 4:04:40 Pace: 9:20

(I've been watching her times all morning. The internet is so cool.)

Intersections 2

Five wooded acres with a creek running through them. More than an hour's drive from any major city. For sale.

My grandfather gave me that land as a wedding gift. His transparent hope: that my husband and I would build a house next door to his and my grandmother's and raise our children there. An unlikely scenario, given our two-career dilemma at the time and the fact that, while I occasionally entertained Atticus Finch fantasies, our connections to my tiny hometown were simply too tenuous for us to establish ourselves there. But my grandfather was an optimistic man.

He was also a completely secular man. I know of only three religious legends about him. And the first of them doesn't even really concern him but, rather, his mother. A WCTU matron, she apparently sallied forth from her home every Monday to visit the rectory and advise the Methodist minister on the ways in which his sermon of the previous morning might have been improved. I'm sure his enthusiasm upon seeing her must have been somewhat restrained.

The second story isn't really about my grandfather either. My grandmother had an uncle who was a Methodist bishop, "the most tedious man on the planet," according to my grandfather's description. He extended that tidbit of commentary one day by adding, "Marrying and burying ~ that's all they're good for."

The only story with any religious bent that directly portrays my grandfather himself came from a friend who is a nun. My family was in the grain business and the nuns, whose convent lies twenty minutes from town, have a farm, so my grandfather frequently spent time with them, discussing beans and corn and equipment and weather. As the decades passed, my grandparents and the sisters discovered mutual interests in music, art, politics, and nature, and became fast friends. The story in question probably comes from about 1970; my grandfather would have been about sixty-five years old and Sister A about forty. She told me some time ago that they were visiting together one afternoon and he mentioned that he would like to go into the sanctuary.

"So we did," she said. "And I genuflected, and moved into the pew, and knelt down to pray. Your grandfather followed me and sat down on the bench. After a few moments, he said, "You really believe in all this, don't you?"

Bemused, she responded, "Yes, H. I do."

"Sometimes," he said, "I wish I could."

Sister A was the first person I consulted about selling my land to help pay for seminary. Although there had never been the tiniest thread of obligation attached to the gift, I still felt uneasy. Certainly my grandfather's intention could not have been less related to the reality unfolding before me, and to sell under these circumstances and in this market is hardly a savvy economic move of which he would approve, regardless of purpose.

"Your grandfather," said Sister A, "would have wanted you to exercise complete freedom of choice in this situation, and he would be thrilled to have been able to help." And then her eyes began to dance and she began to chuckle. "If only he were alive so that I could see the look on his face at this turn of events!"

Last week-end I was down in the southern part of the state visiting family. I walked the creek , which at the moment is a dry bed of rocks, not a run in any way, shape, or form. I flipped over the fossilized remains of brachiopods and coral, hoping for a trilobite. (We have never found even one in that creekbed, although a massive trove of them lies on a remote farm a few miles away, but I am optimistic, too.) I listened to the chickadees and a distant catbird, and looked over the building site above the creek, a perfect foundation for a thatched-roof cottage designed for hobbits. I hope that someone who will love the land purchases it, but I have relinquished control over all potentialities in that regard.

And then I stopped by the convent to see Sister A, who greeted me with open arms and the words, "So here comes the future minister!"

Yes, my life is brimming with intersections. Devout Catholic nun friends colluding with a grandfather whose own deeply reflective life of the spirit precluded allegiance to organized religion. Land marked by the creatures of the Paleozoic, and by the descendants of the Puritans of the seventeenth century and the German immigrants of the nineteenth who married each other and farmed there for generations. Ancestral people and places whose message echoes down the creek and through the woods and across the fields: Go! We all made you who you are, but you cannot stay rooted to this land and be the woman whom you are called to be. Gather what we have offered you, put it to use, and go.

Five wooded acres with a creek that usually runs through them. For sale.

More Life Is Good

We spent the evening having a picnic with friends whose own Lovely Daughter leaves for her junior year abroad later this week. Three of the four Montessori friends were there, each of them in the process of turning twenty this summer.

"We are SO PROUD of you girls," I told them. "How many people have said to me, "Your daughter goes to college in Oregon ? ~ but that's so far! And next year the three of you will be in Singapore, France, and Prague!" They are such wonderful girls: confident, articulate, and good-humored, but also gentle and unassuming. We are indeed all so proud of them.

And I have some more Chicago photos: The Young Adults (including Chicago Son's Girlfriend) in black and white, since The Lovely Daughter would no doubt notice the bruised sheen on her face left over from the Wisdom Teeth Escapade; a four-masted ship docked at Navy Pier; and more from the Stained Glass Museum: a Tiffany window portraying an angel guide, and a window from Chicago's Temple Emmanuel, c. 1908 or 1917.

Summer Saturday Morning 9-10

Memories for myself: I thought I would do a series of vignettes over the next several days, just here and there, to record a few slices of my life at this point in time.

I'm driving to Borders to pick up Harry Potter for the Lovely Daughter, whose puffy cheeks with the pale blue bruises where her wisdom teeth used to be are causing increasing discomfort. It was a happy accident that we scheduled the surgery for the HP release date ~ she should be distracted for at least a few hours. I listen to part of an interview with Billy Bob Thornton on Morning Edition; I did not realize that he was a musician as well as an actor. I hear an ad for yet another event we are missing; there are also reasons for which having scheduled a child's surgery for a July week-end is most unfortunate. No Arlo Guthrie outdoors tonight, no Tchaikovsky outdoors tomorrow night, no Irish bands at the fairgrounds all week-end. Well ~ the weather is perfect for all the people who will actually get to go to those concerts.

I am about 12th in line as the store opens, with customers and clerks alike in a jovial frame of mind. I pick up a copy of The New Yorker as well, and head out to the car, where I stop to read the final pages of HP before tossing my package in the trunk. I can never settle down and enjoy a book with the ending still in question. So yes, I know what happens ~ and my lips are glued shut.

I wander across the parking lot to Wal-Mart, and then back to Office Max. I don't know what I am looking for, exactly ~ nothing, really. But it's a beautiful morning, hardly anyone is out and about, and I don't even mind the ugly parking lot and shopping center, products of an alarming failure of imagination on the part of our city fathers and mothers.

I drive to the bakery/coffee shop where I meet with a group of friends most Saturday mornings. Morning Edition is doing a piece on Sky Islands, those isolated groups of mountains between the huge lengths of the Rockies and the Sierra Madre ~ the Chiricahuas, the Catalinas, the Huachucas. It's a fascinating discussion on the efforts to preserve the extraordinarily diverse ecosystems that extend out of the desert as the altitude rises. I have explored several of the places they discuss and am immmediately transported back to sunny days in southeastern Arizona with our very young family, looking for hummingbirds, trogons, and zone-tailed hawks.

As anticipated, none of the regular group has appeared. A lot of people had obligations this morning. I do run into a friend leaving with her coffee, and we have a brief discussion about the movie Evening ~ she is the second of my friends to report that it is somewhat confusing ~ and universal health care, as occasioned by her having seen Michael Moore's Sicko.

I switch to a music station for the drive home. Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young are singing Carry On, the music of my adolescence. It could be a crisp and sunny day in the Connecticut Valley instead of in the midwest. I wait for an inordinately long red light. The Beach Boys begin singing Wouldn't It Be Nice? Ah . . . a long ago mutual attraction never converted into even the beginnings of a romance. It makes no objective sense, but the Beach Boys and the Berkshires are forever connected in my mind.

And how exactly is it that I grew up NOT to live in western Massachusetts??????