I Just Kinda Feel Like . . .

doing a Saturday Six:

1. You're producing a school program for the holidays and you learn that there will be major objections if you include in your musical selections the traditional Christmas hymns that reference the "true meaning of Christmas." Assuming that there are secular tunes (like "Frosty the Snowman") already included in the program, what do you do with the hymns? Do you allow them to go as is, do you use the melody and rewrite the words, do you include as many pieces of music from other religions as possible, or do you remove all but the secular songs?

I start negotiating to include Christmas, Channukah, Kwanzaa and Solstice songs. My kids' former elementary and middle school has a Solstice Celebration with all kinds of music and it's great.

2. What percentage of your Christmas shopping is done at this point? When do you expect to have it finished if you haven't already finished?

None whatsoever. It will be finished by December 24, unless it isn't.

3. What was your favorite board game to play as a kid? Is it still your favorite now?

Monopoly, then and now. But only if unencumbered horse trading is allowed. (I made my future sister-in-law cry once when I acquired most of the board while she was still figuring out my family's rules.) Truthfully, though, I hate board games. If I really had a favorite now, it would probably be Candyland with a little kid.

4. Take this quiz (if you haven't already!): What famous artist should paint your portrait?

Seems that "Salvador Dali should paint your portrait. You love to think about the world in a different way then everyone else. You are very ambitious, and you like strange things. You are curious about everything and love to learn."

5. How accurate is this quiz's description of you?

Well, my thinking is reasonably conventional and I'm not terribly ambitious, but I am insatiably curious. I was kind of hoping for Picasso, though. Preferably blue.

6. If you could go back in time and have one more picture taken with a deceased loved one, who would you select and why?

I would love to have a picture of the adult me with my mother and her mother. I don't have any pictures of me with my mother after my seventh birthday, and none of me with my grandmother after sometime in junior high. What I'd really like, though, is to go out for dinner with both of them. And, by the way, my son is not here. Southwest cancelled all its flights out of Midway tonight, so he and his girlfriend have gone back to school. A reprieve for them, since she's off to Europe for the next two quarters, so I'm not complaining.

Sccrreeeeeeekkkkk!

The View From Above

(Chicago from the Hancock Tower)

I have no idea what sounds a gannet makes. I am guessing that the title hereof works, though, as a sound of triumph: my final exam is done!

What would you like to know about Ignatian spirituality? Just ask. No jokes about Dominicans in lieu of will be entertained.

We have written about 80 pages for this class this past semester. That's a lot of pages -- five or six pages a week which, when you think that each page represents two or three hours of work -- well, that's a lot of reading and thinking and writing for people who have actual lives outside the classroom. All behind me now, though, so I feel quite sanguine about the whole enterprise.

And actually kind of bubbly -- no, not my usual MO -- but now I can think about Christmas! One of my friends "did" her house last week-end -- cleaned for two days and then put up the tree -- and commented how she didn't mind the work at all because it all looks and smells so wonderful. Well, I will miss out on the smells, since I am lacking that sense (makes having pets so much more tolerable) but I am for sure looking forward to how things will look. And just in time to enjoy, since son numero uno arrives from Chicago tonight, if he remembers to get on his plane which, if you know anything about University of Chicago students, you understand is not guaranteed.

And yes, feeling a little sad and troubled, too. When is there NOT sadness in the air? The news out of Tulane University, my daughter's erstwhile and we hope continuing college, yesterday was all bad, in the short-run sense -- undergraduate college reorganization, faculty terminations, the med school closed for the rest of the year, several majors and Ph.D. programs getting the axe. I retain the utmost respect for Scott Cowen, the indefatiguably optimistic and driven president of the university, but he and his board have had to make some tough, tough decisions that have left many young people reeling yet again.

I happened to be on a parents' message board yesterday when another mom mentioned that her daughter was down there and IN my daughter's dorm as we were posting. I had high hopes that she might be able to take a peek and see whether the lovely daughter's possessions are still there, but in the end she couldn't make any headway; the first floor of the dorm is completely torn up. Not the most comforting news for a mother whose child will be moving in in 32 days.

Most of the country has no idea what is and is not going on in New Orleans. The President and Congress have turned their backs; it is up to the private sector and the individuals who want to make something happen to see that it does. We will be trying, however unexpectedly, to do our part, when we settle our tiny, self-possessed, and determined offspring into her dorm on what we hope is high ground above Lake Ponchetrain. The Tulane student population will increase the population of NOLA by twenty percent; I have a feeling some people down there will be happy to see those kids return.

First, however, I will be glad to see one of them back here in another week.

Intentionally Untitled

I'm still so disoriented -

Not ready with the endurance winter requires -

Things going badly at work -

No idea how to respond to last question on final exam -

House a mess -

Way behind on my grading because I just don't feel like doing it -

Kids coming home but not mentally ready for them -

Sad and challenging news today about my daughter's university -

And I can't think of a thing to write about -

Oh, and one more little thing -- today I received the following email from a member of a yahoo listserve I'm on - or rather, was on, since she's deleted the entire thing as a result of this good news:

Yahoo is now using something called "Web Beacons" to track Yahoo Group users around the net and see what you're doing and where you are going-- similar to cookies. Yahoo is recording every website and every group you visit.

I feel hounded, by the media, by the crass commercialism that passes for the holidays, and by the internet.

Maybe it's time to put the blog down for a nap.

A Celtic Spirituality - Part II

THE PAPER NAUTILUS

For authorities whose hopes

are shaped by mercenaries?

Writers entrapped by

teatime fame and by

commuters' comforts? Not for these

the paper nautilus

constructs her thin glass shell.

Giving her perishable

souvenir of hope, a dull

white outside and smooth-

edged inner surface

glossy as the sea,

the watchful

maker of it guards it

day and night; she scarcely

eats until the eggs are hatched.

Buried eight-fold in her eight

arms, for she is in

a sense a devil-fish,

her glass ram's

horn-cradled freight

is hid but is not crushed;

as Hercules, bitten

by a crab loyal to the hydra,

was hindered to succeed,

the intensively

watched eggs coming from

the shell free it when they are freed,

--leaving its wasp-nest flaws

of white on white, and close-

laid Ionic chiton-folds

like the lines in the mane of

a Parthenon horse,

round which the arms had

wound themselves as if they knew love

is the only fortress

strong enough to trust to.

~ Marianne Moore

A Celtic Spirituality - Part I

The great loves of the Celts: words and music and nature. One of the pleasures of blogging has been the restoration of all three to me in the form of friendships that extend across whatever the internet is, exactly; friendships that develop among people who love the same words, or harken to the same music, or see the same mystery in the eye of a bird or the curve of a shell.

I published an entry about an afternoon on the Lake Erie shoreline and Judith Heartsong asked for some North Shore skipping stones to remind her of joyful days past. She refused my offer of postage and agreed to make a contribution to a college my family cares about in memory of my recently departed stepmother as a way of paying me back. But that Judi! -- an artist's generosity wells up from her heart and she sent me something as well.

Hmmm......I wondered. AOL in disarray and my technological competence in need of a boost. So it took me awhile to get myself in gear. But not so long to find a poem about the nautilus and all those other things that mothers and artists and lovers ponder. So in the next entry. . . a joyful Christmas season to you, Judi and Virgina.

Both Sides Now

I came home to let the dog out, grab some lunch and, mostly, feel sorry for myself.

I've just had my third disconcerting run-in in recent weeks with colleagues and administrators. The details aren't important. Let's just say that it isn't difficult to undermine a teacher's self-confidence. We are pulled in so many directions at once by so many constituencies and have so little control over our work ~ I could probably find half a dozen incidents in any given day which I could allow to eviscerate my self-image if I were so inclined.

Usually I'm not. But sometimes ~ sometimes the critiques just go to the heart of who I am as a person and what I hope to accomplish with my students. Those are the killers. I can set aside parental demands for As, and administrative demands to teach attentiveness, self-discipline, co-operative discussion, history, and writing all simultaneously in the same forty-minute period, and student pleas for attention now see me now aren't I wonderful right this second, but it's much harder to respond with diffidence to words that imply that what I have to offer as a human being is pointless.

I need to take these feelings and use them for someone else's benefit. Late yesterday afternoon, a student nearly sobbed as she pleaded with me to explain why nothing she does for my classes ever works out. (Not exactly the case, but hyperbole is a frequent feature of adolescent self-expression.) I was able to make some suggestions as to how she might approach her work to obtain more productive results, but as we talked it occurred to me that the most important thing that I could do for her was just to sit with her and let her wail.

And today I realized why. She felt just the way that I do right now. She poured her heart into a thesis that wasn't, and spent an hour studying for a quiz via a method designed to ensure disaster, and she feels that her grades reflect something about her as a human being.

If only that were all there is to it. If only the value in presence were more recognized.

Playtime

Winter is good—his Hoar Delights

Italic flavor yield

To Intellects inebriate

With Summer, or the World—

Generic as a Quarry

And hearty—as a Rose—

Invited with Asperity

But welcome when he goes.

Emily Dickinson

1316

Chicago - In Front of the Field's Windows - Thanksgiving 2005

The thing about community is -- it creates itself. When there's a reason for folks to go somewhere and a space for them to to be who they are -- they do.

Procrastination

Ohhhhhh....I have these papers to write. They are all due by Monday, December 12 at noon, at which time I can start thinking about Christmas. Not one moment before -- well, that's a lie. I got home from the grocery last night 45 minutes after I said I would because I ran into a friend and after we discussed all the kids, we had to puzzle out Christmas Dinner. Christmas Dinner is usually here, but this year her husband is having hip surgery on December 15. So . . . will he want to come here? What if it's snowy and icy? Should we move it to her house? Will he even be in the mood to talk to anyone? I think we left it that we will both clean our houses and we'll decide where to go on Christmas Eve. Or Christmas morning, if we have to. Everyone brings food so it doesn't much matter where we go.

ALSO, I see that my friend Marian has her tree up. AND we got our first Christmas card yesterday -- from Marian. All I can say to that is that we have a LOT more snow than she does, but no one had a snow day around here.

Anyway, while I am waiting for my pasta to cook and avoiding my papers, I thought I would share the first thing I see in every room of my house (first floor only) to remind myself that it all has to be transformed, and SOON:

Living Room: A couple of my son's projects from an architecture class last summer, stashed on the mantle out of the way of a certain dengerous feline;

Sunroom: The box from the Home/Office Toolbox that one of my friends gave my daughter last June as the best high school graduation gift ever. Of course, given how things go, the box is here, the actual toolbox is in New Orleans, and the daughter is in Oregon.

Back Porch: Eight inches of freshly fallen snow.

Kitchen: A newspaper with the headline: IRAQ: WHAT'S NEXT?, an atlas open to Chicago and a guidebook to Scotland -- YES! Next July! Iona, here we come!

Dining Room: Little piles of books and papers on Ignatian spirituality. Those pesky papers.

Front Hall: The approximately 200 catalogs that have reproduced themselves in the past week.

Front Porch: The Adirondack chairs under that eight inches of snow.

Rudolph, this would be a good day to put in an appearance.

Transitions

I have two of them to write about:

Two weeks from tomorrow my daughter will be home, and a month later she will leave again -- off to college for the THIRD time.

In August, she left with high hopes and a heart full of optimism for her freshman year of college at Tulane and for her life in a new city. She got blown hither and yon by Katrina, showed up back home minus most of her belongings, reoriented herself, and three days later was off for her freshman year of college at Willamette.

("Mom," she said when she got home, "I did everything I was supposed to do. I worked hard, got good grades, visited schools, took SATs, filled out forms and wrote essays and got recommendations, sorted through my acceptances, made a decision, graduated from high school, went to Linens 'N Things, packed up and drove 1000 miles -- and my college DISAPPEARED. What am I supposed to do with THAT?"

"Sweetheart, I have no idea," I responded. "No one does. But we'll figure it out." And we did. And we got on a plane bound for Portland. )

She has been so lucky. She arrived to a room with linens provided by Residential Services, goodies provided by Food Services, a welcome letter from the college president, and a roommate thrilled to meet her. Professors made room in their classes and gave her time to catch up on the week's work she had missed. She joined an intramural soccer team and started volunteering at the Salem Animal Shelter. She exchanged visits with one of her lifelong best friends who attends Reed, an hour from Willamette. She spent what looks from the photos to have been a delightful Thanksgiving with her roommate's family in southern Oregon.

And in two weeks it will all be over.

I could shout my pride in this child to the rooftops. She is a model of resiliency and cheerful adaptation. She has made wonderful friendships at Willamette, but she is looking forward to another start at Tulane, more new friends, new classes, and a chance to assist in the rebuilding of a city. Her attitude toward a college experience that is looking nothing like the one she had planned on is one of total aplomb.

But I will admit to some trepidation. I think it will be really hard. The transition from high school to college is something of a challenge in and of itself -- the end of one lifestyle, the reordering of relationships, the beginning of a new approach, and the creation of new bonds -- and now for these NOLA college kids, the same transition all over again, only a few months after the last one. When I looked at the Thanksgiving pictures, I wanted to cry -- the girls have become such good friends, and instead of three more years together, they get two weeks.

I posted something similar to this wail on a Tulane parents board and got little sympathy. Fair enough to call me on excessive hyperbole in the face of the suffering still faced by most NOLA residents. But I also realized from the responses that my daughter really has been the recipient of incredible generosity and good fortune. I would not be so sorry about her departure from Willamette had it not been such a positive experience for her.

As for my own transition, from my beloved AOL journal to this one -- well, bear with me. I have a tremendous amount of work to do in the next two weeks and the challenges of a new system are too time-taxing for me to undertake right now. I think I need a full day to move my life from AOL to my other server, and another full day to really set up shop here. I just have to remember that I had a steep learning curve at AOL as well, and it was a long time before I could create full-fledged entires there.

If my daughter can move back and forth across the country with so little consternation, I guess I can switch screens.

(The Fairy Godmother Delivers Cinderella's Coach)

(The Baffled Prince Holding The Slipper After The Ball)














(The Slipper Fits The Lady)

When I turned on the television in our Chicago hotel room Friday morning, a local station was doing a story on the Marshall Field's Department Store holiday windows. The eleven windows of the State Street store develop a fantastical story every holiday season, complete with elaborate design and animated figures.

The exquisite detail and charm of the windows would warrant a news story each year entirely of their own accord. The interviewer spoke with the chief designer, and showed us the storage space housing decades of costumes and sets -- all interesting stuff. But the story has a different twist this year, since Field's has been bought by Macy's and the future of the windows is uncertain. People are unhappy about the acquisition of a local landmark store by a national retailer -- as we were out and about later in the day, I overheard one young woman telling the story to a companion and planning her own boycott of Macy's.

Why do these things matter so much? What difference does it make whether we shop at Macy's or Field's, at a Home Depot or a local hardware store, at a Walmart or a neighborhood retailer? What's good for business is good for America, right?

Oops -- that speaker was discredited over 70 years ago. Good business is good for America, and the world -- but what is good business?

We've obviously had a chance to reflect upon that over the past week or so in AOL Journal Land. And I think we all know that one of the things good business does is build community, or create a climate in which community builds itself. Certainly some of the apprehension felt by Field's customers has to do with their fears concerning the destruction of community.

The folks at Marshall Field's never had to create those display windows on State Street. They didn't have to continue thetradition decade after decade. People would still do their holiday shopping there, even if the windows were full of nothing more imaginative than plasma television screens and the latest in X-Box technology.

But the windows became a gift to Chicago, a gift that built community. Whether they are "consistent with Field's objectives" remains unstated -- but my guess is that they are. Community, good feelings, loyalty -- they are all precious business commodities as well as personal treasures. They are created by a business that cares enough about its customers to welcome them to its premises, year after year after year, and to treat them like royalty once they arrive.

En Route

Most of the sandhill cranes in easern North America pass through the Jasper-Pulaski Wildlife Refuge in northern Indiana on their fall and spring journeys. There are probably 10-12,000 cranes in northern Indiana right now, although to see them en masse you have to be at the right place (J-P) at the right time (sunrise and sunset), which we weren't. Nevertheless, we saw several hundred in mid-afternoon yesterday. And we were treated to a view of a large herd of deer, a flock of wild turkeys, and four coyotes, all mingling in the fields far beyond the cranes.

Frozen

We're in the Windy City for a couple of days, hanging out with our college junior sons while college freshman daughter spends the holiday with her roommate's family in southern Oregon.

We had a fabulous dinner last night at the Chicago Firehouse Restaurant, and have otherwise thrown all outdoor plans to the winds (literally) -- it was a rousing 13 degrees not counting wind chill when I got up this morning. So we've been to the Museum of Science and Industry and the top of the Hancock Building and the Field Museum. We left the Field tonight as the snow showered down and took off for the Marshall Fields' windows (Cinderella this year -- the last that the windows will appear under the Fields' moniker, as the stores have been bought by Macy's) and, quite by accident, the downtown holiday tree lighting.

I have lots of photos to share when I return, although many tonight were taken under less than optimal conditions: a huge and jostling crowd in a white Christmas snowstorm. But it's been fun.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Now Thank We All Our God

(Listen)

Not Yet. . .

I'm not ready for full-fledged blogging yet, not here or on aol or anywhere. I'm just wading through the flotsam and jetsam of what remains of my creation of the past 1.5 years, kind of deciding: what next?

But since one of the nice and wholly unexpected benefits of journaling was that I now have a way of looking back over what I've been doing for 18 months ("Unexpected?" you ask ~ but I certainly never expected that I'd be able to keep it up!), I know that I don't want to lose track again of the particles of my life. Herewith, therefore, the last few days, of little interest to anyone but myself:

I wasted a good deal of Friday on the aol Journaland crisis.

I spent some of Saturday morning with my friends, all of whom I managed to offend by commenting that young ladies who wear spaghetti-strap tops with their bra straps showing look like sluts. Since this includes all of our daughters on occasion, people took offense. (On the other hand, most of them are far more offended than I am by the show-your-belly look. To each her own, as always. At least we were all able to agree that very few women, regardless of age, have bellies that bear baring.) I am perhaps less inured than my friends to the slut look because of my employment in an Orthodox Jewish school, where the young women dress with extreme modesty. I have reached the point where I find all that skin and underwear on display somewhat offensive. And no -- not because I think it is the responsibility of women to keep men in check. I just think people look better with more clothes on than less, Tyra Banks being the possible exception that proves the rule.

Saturday night we went to see Jarhead. Now THAT was a depressing evening. I had read the book when it first came out and, as I told my husband, the movie is no more uplifting. I'm not exactly sure how it is that we can looked at charred bodies of young men and continue the human enterprise of warfare, but it seems that we do.

Sunday morning I made a presentation to our church adult ed class on St. Benedict and Benedictine spirituality. It was extremely well received, which was pretty nice for me. I did a Powerpoint, which I have never done outside a high school classroom before -- my path to technological competence continues apace, thanks in part, I suppose, to aol.

Sunday evening our church hosted a series of dinner discussion groups of Jim Wallis's God's Politics: Why the Right is Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It. A friend and I were discussion facilitators in another home -- a home so huge and lush that you would have been hard pressed to guess there was a discussion of poverty going on over dinner. Or was there? We had a tough, tough time with our group. Two of the gentlemen defined politics as "the art of manipulating social and governmental relationships" and consequently argued that there is no such thing as God's politics. Hence, I'm not sure we ever got past the cover.

So. A week-end. The week will bring vacation and a trip to Chicago, and maybe some time to mellow out.

Why Search the Sea? Why Gannet Girl?

The immediate and obvious answers have to do with the current implosion at AOL, where I have kept ajournal for 1.5 years. Myopic corporate vision, contempt for customers, technological incompetence. Who knows how it will all play out? I have loved my journal there, and the small cadre of friends I have found -- thoughtful writers, brilliant artists, sensitive photographers. But, as I said yesterday, to everything there is a season (well, okay, someone else said that, thousands of years ago, but I can plagiarize with the best of them) and perhaps for me this is a season of change.

I had actually begun and abandoned this journal sometime back. I wanted a more private place -- people, including all those in my daily life at home and work -- have known me by my aol screenname for over a decade. (Ironically for aol, those of us with the longest ties to that entity seem to be the most enraged by its dismissal of our concerns and the most willing to forge a new life elsewhere.) But I find the technological aspect challenging (think of that as an understatement) and there were a great many pros to sticking with the identity and space I had created at aol.

Nevertheless, I've been pushed out of my little nest and, like the gannets I so admire, I'm feeling a little adventurous. Here's most of what I wrote when I first opened this journal:

To see what a gannet looks like, all you need is a google image search. Gannets are enormous and sleek creamy-white seabirds, with black wingtips, yellow heads and necks, and startlingly outlined eyes. They nest on the rocky cliffs of the European and North American coasts of the North Atlantic and, once grown, spend their days sailing across the ocean. The acrobatics by which they make their living ~ steep climbs into the air and speedy plunges straight into the sea ~ are rivaled only by those of pelicans.

I've only seen gannets off the coast ~ far, far off the coast ~ of St. Augustine a few times in the early spring. They are propelled inland when storms rough up the seas, and on sunny days their gleaming white and black wings and torpedo-shaped bodies in the distance are unmistakable.

And I've only seen one up close once -- we were on a motorboat headed out into the ocean for a parasailing trip and our guide was surprised to learn that the massive bird placidly riding the swells was something other than "an ordinary ole' gull."

What better metaphor for a sweeping search of one's life choices and opportunities than a gannet extended above the waves, a regal and yet restless surveyor of the vast ocean surface? The gannet reminds us that life is an adventure in both beauty and profound unease, and that the sea itself is limitless in its textures and possibilities.

High Tech

If you saw me, you would know. I mean it -- you would really KNOW. I am so not functional in this century.

And yet, surprisingly, I am. I am sitting here in the dining room, where books and papers are crammed into and onto every surface, where my great-great grandmother's china sits in the cupboard, and where a cat making funny little brrrrpiiiiing noises is perched on a carpet on a hardwood floor, with all her feet tucked under her. The only concession to the modern world is this little gadget on which I am typing away with my two index fingers.

So here's what I've done today to justify my presence in the century in which I happen to live -- besides work and yes, I did do a tiny bit of that. If I hadn't gone there, I couldn't have accessed my lonely AOL journal to send people here.

1. I added links! A few at a time. It's an arduous process but I'm getting the hang of it.

2. I moved some entries over. That process isn't any easier.

3. I cleaned out my AOL cookies and cache, whatever on earth that means, and had a very pleasant exchange with AOL Joe, who is indeed trying to share helpful (albeit ultimately useless) assistance with respect to the problem of saving AOL entires.

4. I did write a new AOL entry, and stashed it in Joe's comment section. It's about how advertising really is a significant social issue for the 21st century. Unfortunately I have no idea how to do in-text links over here yet, so if you want to read it -- well, you'll just have to go look for it. It wasn't all that good or even interesting, so you probably won't want to bother.

5. I navigated the Tulane University website and made several phone calls to some lovely folks in New Orleans in a (succcessful!) attempt to find the college course description catalog online -- now THERE's an internet task. My lovely daughter in Oregon is now registered for classes in Louisiana with a little help from her mom in Ohio.

6. In the process of muddling my way through the various Tulane links, I learned that several people might not be available to help me this late Friday afternoon because they were throwing a bon voyage party for a colleague who lost her house and all its contents.

So don't worry about my inability to distinguish between the significant and the trivial. Every time I call New Orleans, I am reminded how lucky I am to have the dining room, the books, the papers, the china, the carpet, the floor and, most especially, the cat.

To Everything There Is A Season

I don't actually do change.

I wouldn't have changed my name for man, institution, or convention.

I wouldn't have moved for a job, mine or anyone else's.

I would never have left AOL Journals on my own initiative. I had created a wonderful cyberspace there, far more successfully than any attempt I had ever made to address a three-dimensional space in the physical world. I was all curled up in a big, wide, soft chair, surrounded by reading material, paintings and photographs, and friends. What more could I have asked for?

It seems, however, that even I can be propelled into a new world, however unwillingly.

It's not so easy. I don't know where to get my oil changed or where anything is located on the grocery shelves. I don't know where to walk. My friends are scattered all over the place and I don't know how to find them. I don't know how to link, either literally or figuratively. It's going to take months to move my baggage down the street. I just deleted an entry and screwed up a photo, so obviously I don't have a handle on the new place, but the old place is cluttered with debris -- and locked up.

Well, I will figure it out. I will locate my friends. I will learn how to do the technology, which means that I will find other people who can lead me through it, one word at a time. I will learn to use Bloglines. I will even learn what words like RSS and feed mean. I will probably learn that the new can be better than the old.

But at the moment, it all feels kind of sad and lonely.

Welcome To My New Home

In A Pickle

I've spent quite a bit of time on what can only be described as a conservative Christian message board. But I have come to the conclusion that staying there is such a violation of who I am that it is impossible for me to continue. At the same time, I can't really say good-bye to some of the people whom I genuinely like and respect, since "drama queen" would be the inevitable label.

Here's the conundrum:

When someone posts something with which I completely disagree, my choices are:

(1) I can state my disagreement, which enables me to be true to myself, my beliefs and values, and my friends, but invites vigorous disapproval and accusations that I am trying to create controversy where none exists.

(2) I can, without indicating my opinion one way or the other, note that we had agreed to avoid controversy, in the hope that people will stop posting on the topic. This prevents me from being true to myself, my beliefs and values and friends, but enables me to remain a gracious observer rather than a pot-stirrer. Nevertheless, it invites vigorous disapproval and accusations that I am trying to create controversy where none exists, just as if I had made an argumentative statement to start with.

(3) I can remain silent, keeping my objections to myself, as I very often do. This also prevents me from being true to myself, my beliefs and values and friends, and enables the original poster and supporters to believe that their position is unquestionably supported. It is also unhealthy for me, as my ears begin to steam and my blood pressure to rise whenever I see the disputed topic heading, which almost no one else will publicly admit to seeing as controversial.

(4) I can stop visiting the site. This also prevents me from being true to myself, since I do believe that reconciliation among people is a Christian imperative, and since it, too, enables the original poster and supporters to believe that their position is unquestionably supported. However, my presence is hardly mandated -- it's a message board, not a community in which I must live, and my absence will no doubt improve my mental health.

I think I choose (4). In my own community, the real life one in which I live, I have an obligation to vote my conscience and to speak out against injustice at least once in awhile. I am extremely fortunate to live in a place in which most people share my views on political and social issues. I suppose that those who do not share them agonize over whether to leave, just as I would if I lived in a real-life community in which my own values were attacked on a regular basis. I know that people have left my church over the liberal social views of our pastors, and I would have to leave if the situation were reversed. I guess a message board is about the same.

It's discouraging, though. I was at a church meeting tonight in which we talked about how devastating it would be for the worldwide Christian community if we cannot find ways to talk to each other across political lines. Easier said than done, that's for sure.

A Laywoman's Lectionary: Hospitality and Its Reward (6/26/05 Sermon)

Hos"Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. Whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet's reward; and whoever welcomes a righteous person in the name of a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous; and whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple -- truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward." (Matthew 10:40-42) ([NRSV]

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There is a scene early on in the novel To Kill a Mockingbird in which the young Scout Finch, in a state of general despair following her first morning of elementary school, is further provoked when her older brother Jem, always the gentleman, invites her classmate Walter Cunningham home for lunch. In Scout’s view, Walter has been the source of her troubles with her teacher, and she has retaliated by punching him out on the playground. Jem, humiliated by his little sister’s inability to comprehend schoolyard etiquette for girls, is hoping to make amends with Walter and, therefore, the three children find themselves at the Finch family lunch table with the lawyer father Atticus.

As Calpurnia, the housekeeper who makes life livable for Atticus and his children, places lunch on the table, Walter asks for a pitcher of syrup. Calpurnia supplies the pitcher withouta word, and Scout looks on in amazement as Walter proceeds to douse his entire plate with the stuff. Jem’s hopes for a truce are dashed when Scout, unable to contain herself, screeches, “Walter, WHAT IN THE SAM HILL ARE YOU DOIN’?"

Calpurnia dispatches Scout to the kitchen with that speed well known to women grimly determined that their hospitable overtures will not be destroyed by impulsive children. “But he’s ruinin’ it,” Scout protests with a whine. “That boy’s your company,” responds Calpurnia, “and if he wants to eat up the tablecloth you let him, you hear?” Thus is Scout introduced to one of the most basic tenets of hospitality: make generous provision for whatever your guests want or need, regardless of how unusual the request.

Most of us learn the basic lessons of hospitality in a more congenial forum. Long before we bring home children whose noses we have bloodied, we absorb lessons in creating a welcoming environment. In my case, those lessons came from my grandmother whose efforts I, as a young girl, of course took completely for granted. I knew that I could call her up anytime and slip down the gravel road between our houses to spend the night at hers, in a room freshly made up with clean sheets and towels, with a rose from her garden on the dresser. As I grew older and went away to school and college and law school and married life, I could still call her up anytime and announce that I would be coming for the night. I would pull up the hill to find her waiting on the brick patio under the maple tree with icy lemonade and chocolate chip cookies, and know that inside a delicious dinner was roasting in the oven and my bedroom awaited me. It wasn’t until I had children of my own that I realized that all of that preparation entailed WORK on her part, and that it isn’t so easy to reorganize your day to include making up a new room and replanning your meals and probably making an unscheduled trip to the grocery. It’s not so difficult when you are accommodating family and friends, known quantities, as when someone completely unfamiliar drops by, but it still involves work –and attentiveness.

Sometimes it seems that the Bible reads like one long call to attentiveness to the presence of God in our midst, and today’s passage is no exception. It’s one of those long sets of sayings of Jesus, sayings probably culled from a variety of places and times in his ministry and pulled together to create a single scene, in which Jesus is about to send his disciples out to proclaim the coming of the kingdom. His instructions seem designed to instill confidence in men about to enter unknown and possibly hostile territory; he gives them to power to heal and cleanse, but also warns them that they are being “sent forth as sheep in the midst of wolves.” He tells them that they should make no mistake about the significance of their mission, saying, “Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.” They go not as individuals, but as emissaries of Christ himself.

Consequently, those to whom they go, unaware though they may be, are also being called to participation in a relationship of deep magnitude. Some will, literally and figuratively, see the disciples as beloved family members, receiving them as my grandmother always welcomed me, with lemonade on the terrace and a rose on the dresser. Others will maintain the stance of a Scout Finch, seeing in the disciples baffling strangers with crude customs. In both cases, says Jesus, the welcome offered the disciples will result in the reward of a prophet. “Whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet's reward; and whoever welcomes a righteousperson in the name of a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous."

The language of that last sentence is arresting. Jesus doesn’t suggest that the person who welcomes a prophet or a righteous person in the name of a prophet or righteous person may earn a reward, or should offer his or her welcome in the hope or anticipation of receiving a reward. He says that such a person “will” receive a reward. The reward is inescapable. Is it possible that such a reward might bear little resemblance to what we might normally think of when we think of rewards? It wouldn’t be the first time, would it, that attentiveness to the presence of God results in immediate consequences neither hoped nor longed for? Abram and Sarai are not likely to have been thinking about picking up and moving their household to a distant land when they start listening to God. Moses is the first in a long line of figures who resist with every fiber of their beings the call of God upon their lives for as long as they can – and when he finally acquiesces, what does it get him? Forty years of leading an irritable and complaining people through a wilderness to a final destination that he is not permitted to enter. Mary listens to the call of God and finds herself a pregnant outcast. And Jesus himself, always listening for the guidance of his father, is executed as a political opponent of the Roman Empire.
I was curious about what specifically “the reward of a prophet” might entail, so I looked a few of them up. Isaiah, one of the most prolific and famous of the prophets, likely to have been a member of the aristocratic class, was instructed by God to walk about naked and barefoot for three years. Jeremiah, apparently of priestly descent, was, according to tradition, put to death in Egypt for preaching against idolatry. Micah, a favorite of many in this church for his insistence that all that God requires of us is to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God, does not, so far as I could find, merit even a mention as to the outcome of his life and ministry. I gave up looking after Micah. It was clear enough that the reward of a prophet or of a person of righteousness is not likely to fall into the realm of winning the lottery, or even a cruise or a car.

I always get a bit of a chuckle when someone not interested in the religious dimension of life points out to me with great authority that faith in God is nothing more than a crutch. Faith in God, as nearly every encounter with God in the Bible seems to demonstrate, is far more challenge than crutch. St. Theresa, the sixteenth-century mystic who traveled all over Spain to revive the Carmelite monasteries, was one day bumped from her ox-cart to land in a muddy stream. She shook her fist at God and exclaimed, "If this is the way you treat your friends, no wonder you don't have many!" It does seem surprising that with the examples provided by both the Bible and the later-day saints of God, most of which counter any image of God as a crutch, we yet continually try to reorient ourselves back to God’s ways and God’s paths, as Christ call us to do.

Of course, the reward is not all dramatic and deadly trials, or even muddy landings. The reward, as indicated by the need for welcome and receptivity, lies in attentiveness and in calling others to attentiveness. Attentiveness can be both a troubling curse and a great gift. I think that Nathan, the prophet called to make clear to King David that HE, the king, was the man guilty of so many heinouscrimes, must have felt the cursedness of prophecy. Those called today to issue the call to clarity and justice that so desperately needs to be heard in our land, must frequently be troubled by the reception their words receive. It’s not usually a comfortable feeling to make ourselves available to the values of the kingdom, and to place ourselves on the line for them. If it does feel comfortable, then we should probably be asking whether God’s values are indeed the ones being promulgated.

And yet, despite the discomfort created by God’s call to attentiveness, the other side of the coin, the gift of attentiveness, is one of God’s most profound. Probably most of us in this sanctuary have had the experience of seeing life, or some small aspect of it, revealed in a completely new light following a devastating experience. It is often just in the wake of a great loss that we see most clearly. Many of you know that my stepmother lost her brief and brutal battle with cancer this past spring. I stroked her hand as she died and, a few hours later as I walked down the woodland path to my father’s house, I was utterly saturated by the magic of an early spring morning that she was no longer here to witness. Two gifts born of attentiveness: the opportunity to bear witness to a beloved relative’s passage from this world to another, and the dazzling intensity of the passing of the planet from winter to spring on the cusp of the equinox.
For most of us, the call to attentiveness in the form of welcome comes in the small dailiness of mornings like that. Most of us are not called to become Isaiahs or Micahs; most of us are not even called to preach in theNational Cathedral. Most of us are simply called to be grandmothers welcoming granddaughters, Calpurnias welcoming grungy little boys, daughters helping women welcome the next life. Our rewards are a combination of hard work and discomfort mixed with the awareness of the presence of God, all brought about by attentiveness to the kingdom. It is perhaps for that “most of us” that Christ spoke the final words of today’s passage: “whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple -- truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward.”

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I haven't been here for awhile, but I thought I would post this sermon, my first one ever, which I had the privilege of preaching at our service this morning. Before the reading I thanked the congregation for singing the opening hymn, "Holy, Holy, Holy," which is the traditional opening for the Sunday morning services at the Chautauqua Institution. Today is opening day at Chautauqua and, as I told them, about 45 minutes after we got started, 5,000 people would be singing that hymn in an outdoor ampitheatre, so our singing it was a present to me.
Here are the introduction and prayer, after the reading and before the sermon:

I want to thank C. and J. for the opportunity to preach from the pulpit which they distinguish every week. I'm sure that when we called C. to the position of Director of Lay Leadership, no one was expecting her to go to this extreme. And you would know just how far she's gone had you known me in high school -- a religious high school, in which I frequently slipped out the back door of the chapel just after attendance was taken in order to pursue decidedly non-churchlike activities. But, here I am and here you are, and we have no choice except to work with the material we are given. In that vein, we should definitely begin this enterprise with a prayer.

Gracious God, we are present in gratitude for this magnificent summer morning. We have not forgotten that long, dark, damp, cold, and dreary winter, but we give thanks for the reality that the snow and rain of that season prepared the earth for the lush green respite of these summer days. Enable us to pause now to hear and ruminate upon your word. In the name of Jesus we pray. Amen.

More on the Highlands

I mentioned that week-end before last my dad and I participated in a guided hike on the Ka-Ma-Ma Prairie, a portion of the Highlands Sanctuary properties being preserved in southern Ohio. Our leader, Larry Henry, was a delight, with an autobiography that serves as an example of life's unending twists and turns. I can't do justice to his story, having heard it just that once, but I can offer the highlights:

Unable to afford college, Larry completed a two-year forestry program and ultimately found himself working in state natural resources. He had a successful career under Republican administrations -- he noted to us that Republicans used to stand for conservation of natural resources -- and, ironically, found himself out of work with the election of a Democratic governor. For the next 21 years he and his wife nurtured their love of growing organisms by operating a bakery, but eventually the wild lands of the Arc of Appalachia in southern Ohio issued their call.

Today, the Henrys respond to the challenges posed by the current version of the Republican party by running Highlands Sanctuary and purchasing magnificent pieces of property to preserve them from further development. They are not a second too soon -- southwestern Ohio, where I grew up and never expected to see anything other than farm after farm, is one of the fastest growth areas in the nation. Now it's development after development. My brother, whom I love dearly, lives in such a development -- he lives on a tiny plat of land on one of countless rows of streets characterized by an endless series of brand-new colonials and double locks his doors in the daytime, on land where wheat used to grow and quail once called and where, prior to the advent of the midwestern farmer, wildflowers proliferated and birds nested.
Larry Henry, seen here holding up an ash tree at Ka-ma-ma, is an eloquent advocate for lands that need him. I'm including his wife's most recent online newsletter piece -- she, too, is a passionately articulate spokeperson for the preservation of wild lands:

There is something about spring that soothes our soul in its deepest realms. Spring is the promise that we counted on last winter, when we endured the long winter nights and freezing daytime winds. Those barren trees, once black icey sticks clattering against a gray sky, are today glowing green and living beings, filled with birdsongs and flowers. If we ever lose our wonder for the miracle of life and the renewal of spring, it will be the greatest of losses.I traveled to the Ohio River yesterday to visit the Ohio River Bluffs property that we talked about last time; to seek support from the nearby village of Manchester -- a historic town perched on the mighty artery of the Beautiful River. The river was most comely on Friday, shining in the sun as it flowed past on its long journey to the Mississippi. The black locust trees were outdoing themselves. Every tree was completely shrouded in dangling cream-colored flowers, softening the landscape and filling it with perfume. Manchester, as it turned out, was thrilled at the thought of possibly having a nature preserve on its outer permimeter and gave us a warm welcome, gracing us with a half-day tour of its historic homes and businesses. It is really a lovely place on the river. I think all of us should be visiting the River more often. It defines who we are as a people, it holds our history, it keeps us humble, and it is undoubtedly Ohio's greatest natural feature, debatably second only to Lake Erie to our north. If you missed the pictures of the Ohio River Bluffs that we sent out last time and hopefully a preserve-to-be, see www.highlandssanctuary.org/1bluffs/ohio.river.bluffs.htm If we can raise the modest funds to buy this property (only $50,000), this spectacular Ohio river wildlflower display will be saved forever.On Tuesday I spent the morning in Hozho Canyon Preserve on the Rocky Fork Creek. It was its usual green and vernal self. Hozho is an Indian word for the dependable energy that renews and gives life, and so it was on Tuesday! The boulders that have tumbled into the bottom of the canyon made the water white as it swirled and rushed by -- each rock covered with dangling salmon-pink columbines. A mother wood duck glided downstream, with TEN little fluff-balls bobbing behind her in a tight cluster -- just a few feet away from where I sat upon a bed of sand. As she approached the rapids, she hesitated, then shot through. The ten babies streamed behind her in perfect single file as the water took them for a short but wild shoot through the rapids. For all you emotionally-reserved folks, I apologize for being so warm and fuzzy, but I think this must have been the cutest thing I have ever seen in my entire life. To think these little babies had probably just jumped out of a 10-20 foot high nest cavity over the river is a feat worth pondering. Talk about feeling like you are leaping off the edge of a cliff! And then having to learn to swim on the first try -- all at the tender age of a few hours old!Last night two great blue herons flew high in the sky over my husband, Larry, and my heads. As we watched their slow wingbeats, I felt very deeply the idea-essence of 'stork' and all that storcks have meant to human beings over the milennia. Thank heavens Ohio still has its storks, even if they grace our treetops instead of our roofs. Suddenly one of the herons tipped its wings and dropped rapidly in altitude, like a hawk in a dive, then righted itself before it swooped above the canopy of trees. Its mate froze still in the air, an unmoving shadow in the sky. Then it too tilted its wings to catch the wind, and soared away on a tailwind. Larry and I were flabbergasted. We had never seen such raptor-like flight behavior from these normally heavy-flying herons, who are ususally identified by their slow steady wingbeats and their directional steady flight.

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Highlands Nature Sanctuary E-magazine, May 14, 20057629 Cave Rd., Bainbridge, OH 45612937-365-1600 www.highlandssanctuary.org

Birding Quickie

I had such a disastrous morning, one in which everything I tried to accomplish just crumbled to dust. But I DID make it out to the marsh boardwalk for a whole 20 minutes of birding, and here's what I saw (thanks to other folks for the photos):

Black-and-white warbler:
Yellow warbler:
Chestnut-sided warbler:
American redstart:
Palm warbler:
Northern oriole:
I tried to find a photo of an oriole that would indicate just how glorious it looks singing away in the sunshine from the top of a tree.

Not bad for a 20-minute walk, huh?

Well?

It is quiet around here, as another journaler has noted. So, some questions. If you feel like a week-end chat, post the questions and your answers in your journal and leave a link.
1. Do you know your next door neighbors?
2. Does your family have any interesting plans for summer?
3. When was the last time you saw your in-laws?
4. What is the first thing that you have to do at work on Monday morning?
5. What would I see if I were to walk up to your front door this week-end?

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1. Our neighbors to the west have been here since we moved in 21 years ago. Our combined seven children played together all the time for many,, many seasons. Now among us we have a financial services professional, a married daughter in Germany, a recent graduate back from Germany and looking for work, three in college and one headed that way. The couple to the east moved in few years after we did and eventually produced a darling child who is still in elementary school. We began our acquaintance with a huge squabble over an encroaching fence (ours), but I think we have all nonetheless turned out to be good neighbors to each other.

2. We have been humbled by four different school schedules. The older children have interesting plans -- Spain for one and architectural design classes for the other -- but the rest of us are lagging in the planning department.

3. I think it's been nearly a year! The kids went with their dad to see his family at Christmas, but my extremely limited vacation time and my ill stepmother's needs combined to keep me in-state.

4. Ahhh. I am the yearbook advisor and we are in a state of crisis. The first thing that I have to do is log on to the yearbook website and see whether there is any hope of a yearbook arrival before graduation.

5. You would see an unraveled hose, decrepit daffofils, and. . . Ta Da: (In my old journal, a photograph of a white tulip, gently unfolding).

Rural Cemetery

My mother is buried there, and my brother.

My grandfather, and someday my grandmother.

Other people gone a century ago,

and some more recently, but long after the county lost track of which bones lie where.

A cross made by a desolate child for World's Best Dog, crumbled decades past.

Trillium in abundance.

America the Beautiful

Today is a holiday at my school.
So here's my schedule, with my daughter's court date for last month's accident as its focal point:
Yesterday afternoon: Suddenly remembered that my daughter might lose her license in court today, so raced to meet her at P.O. at 4:30 so she could apply for a new passport while she still has a picture ID in her possession. Informed by hassled employee that they only do weekday passport apps between the convenient hours of 9 and 4. Look at application and ask if she can use her old passport to prove both her citizenship and her identity. Am told no; she MUST have her license because her passport picture (which looks exactly like her) is too old and my presence is inadequate to verify her identity even though, since she is under 18 and obtained her first passport before age 16, my presence is REQUIRED. Get in car and read on app that she CAN use ME to prove who she is. I don't bother to go back in. I am remembering very clearly how they would not allow me to verify the identities of my boys when they got their first passports, despite the CLEAR instructions from the Department of State of the United States of America labeling such as a clear option.

Today, 8:30-9:30: Drive to courthouse of county where she had her accident.

9:30-9:45: Wait for officious bailiff to announce our presence.

9:45 -10: Court hearing. Magistrate is decent and recognizes that daughter made an error of judgment in a bad situation that might have been a problem for anyone, but still puts 2 points on her license and suspends it for 30 days. (In our county, where the judges recognize that points and license suspension for juveniles basically punish the parents, in the form of higher insurance rates and the need to drive said children around, the penalty for a first offense is to bring in 50 cans of food for the homeless after 6 months and, assuming no further incidents, the record is wiped clean. If said child gets another citation in those 6 months, they throw the book at her. MY child was, was, of course, approximately five feet over the county line when she made -- ahem -- a rather large mistake.) She is permitted to drive to school and senior project but we have to turn in her license and get paperwork indicating same. Magistrate agrees that we can hang onto the license for 24 hours so she can do passport application.

10-10:15: Wait for officious bailifff to let us see the clerk (right behind him) to pay fine and costs.

Interlude: Explain to daughter the old saying: "People often feel the need to insist upon demonstrations of authority in exact inverse proportion to the level of power they actually possess."

10:30-11:30: Drive to home P.O. for further demonstration of above maxim. Clerk says casually, "Oh, with you here and her old passport, she doesn't need her LICENSE." I mention that I had asked her about this yesterday and note that she has just added 2 hours of driving to my day. No apology or even blink of recognition forthcoming.

11:30-12:30 Get lunch, go home for a change of clothes, drive daughter to senior project site.

12:30-2:30 Drive back to county courthouse to turn in her license and collect papers saying what her restrictions are. We have forgotten to mention that she takes voice lessons outside of school. Clerk says too bad; you will have to petition the court or drive her yourself. Drive home.

3:30-4:30 Retrieve daughter from senior project.

5-5:30 Daughter has to drive to school for concert. Please God let there be no more traffic incidents.

7:00 I have to drive to school for concert. Another hour's round trip. Isn't this a great day off? Well, it's spring and there will be music at the end of it. And right now I feel an intense need for chocolate chocolate chip.

Highlands of Ohio

Last week-end I went down to visit my dad for the first time since my stepmother died nearly two months ago. One of the reasons I had delayed my visit was our plan to visit the Highlands Sanctuary, which we had to decided to postpone due to the heavy, wet, and destructive snowfall two weeks earlier.

Because the preserves of the Sanctuary are private and managed with an eye toward preservation rather than human intrusion, a permit is required for hiking there, and we missed the one-week pre-registration deadline for our own trip. So my dad signed us up for a guided prarie hike instead, which turned out to be a completely different experience than we would have had on our own. We were with a group of about 20 people, many of them experienced birders and expert botanists. Since I can't recognize bird calls other than those most basic to our neighborhood and know absolutely nothing whatever about wild plants, it was a treat for me to be among knowledgeable (completely obsessed, actually) folks. I'm not sure that I would have otherwise noticed a single wildflower of the many we spent hours photographing.

A Perfect Day - Somewhere Else

I have been playing around with what-do-I-want-to-be-when-I-grow-up questions, incited, no doubt, by my youngest's imminent departure for college, and I've been looking at websites focused on creating a life mission statement. I'm sure that many of us have done this; it's an excellent method for procrastinating the actual getting on with one's life. At any rate, one such site suggested as an exercise writing out your idea of a perfect day. I had a lot of fun with that one, although I only chose one perfect kind of day. Maybe I'll try another one in a week or so.
In my first perfect day, I live in a condo on the ocean in St. Augustine Beach. I have a particular condo in mind, because I've stayed there: it opens onto the dunes and has a huge deck from which you can see the ocean, and the master bedroom is on the ocean side.
I wake up to the sound of the ocean while it's still dark.

I take a sunrise 3-mile walk on the beach, come in and shower, and go back out to the beach to do yoga while my hair dries.

I spend the morning on the deck doing my own work -- writing, working on photos, preparing classes. I eat a light and healthy breakfast and lunch while I am doing those things.
In the early afternoon I go into town, where I teach a couple of classes or go to a meeting or two, and then meet a friend for an early Margarita on the porch of Scarlett O'Hara's or one of the restaurants on the bayfront.

I go back home (Imagine! "Home" is on the ocean!) and change and grab my gear and head over to the marsh for a little kayak trip to a tiny oyster shell-encrusted island so that I can shoot some sunset photos as the full moon rises over the Mantanzas River. I am particularly fond of moonrises over the river as pelicans and herons sail toward their evening roosting spots.
As it gets dark I am loading my kayak back onto my car rack and heading home for a late dinner and conversation with my husband. He's made the dinner, of course, since I am a dreadful cook, and we have become very European in our dining times.

We go out to check on the ocean one last time before falling asleep. It is, miraculously, still there.

Water Not Ice

I am a bit overwhelmed by demands on my writing life: my honors history students are zapping me with e-mailed drafts of a paper due in a few days, and a speaker for next Sunday's adult education at church has landed in the hospital, necessitating a quick revision in plans. I have some good material to use, but I can't figure out where I put it down earlier today. Oh, and I just finished a one-page summary of that 15-page paper I wrote last week for a presentation tomorrow night. (OK, so I cheated; I can't fit it onto one page. I altered the spacing and font size just a tad. Think my ultra-compulsive prof will notice?)

Anyway, for journal purposes, let's just say that I don't have another written word in me right now, but I am very aware that the ice has melted and the grasses are growing in the marshes. Our tiny back yard's feeders briefly hosted a chipping sparrow and a white-crowned sparrow last night -- spring is here, the ice has gone, and the migrants are coming through!

It's finished -- over and out, done, ready to turn in tomorrow night: a 15-page paper on St. Peter's Dome, complete with 60-plus footnotes, a 2-page bibliography, and 14 images. The monstrosity that has dominated my life for weeks and weeks is behind me, and I'm off for a walk to enjoy springtime without the weight of that particular item monopolizing my "To Do" list.

This morning I also ran errands and managed to purchase a short term health insurance policy for one of my college sons, who announced last week that he plans to drop a course, which will relegate him to part-time student status for the remainder of the quarter. "Not so fast," I ordered, before going off to investigate and discovering that, sure enough, immediately upon his dropping said class, both our medical and dental insurance would consider him ineligible for coverage until he is a fulltime student once again next fall. (Not that one should assume that any such thing will happen... .). I could go into a long rant about the state of health insurance in this country and our President's misplaced obsession with Social Security, which might be better directed at the REAL funding crisis we face, the one for medical care for individuals not umbillically attached to a large corporate employer, but I've been muttering about that all week-end. So I'll spare you.

It's SPRING out there. A cold, damp, and cloudy but nevertheless post-equinox day. Things can only be looking up.

Prom? Already? Already Over?

Prom? Already? Already Over?

A baby who always navigated the world in her own way, a scoot rather than a crawl.

A tiny girl with a white-blond cap of hair, standing underneath a newly identified crabapple tree: "Don't let the crabs out!"

A kid in elementary school, taking advantage of Montessori freedom to write cat stories with her girlfriends all day long.

A 10-year-old homeschooler, volunteering at the animal shelter.

A middle schooler, making a graduation speech in which she minces no words about the diappointments wrought by administrative changes.

A high school freshman, stiffening herself against almost unbearable loss and heartache.

A sophomore, realizing that she's "maybe smarter than I thought!"

A junior, reconsidering the above.

Friday, a senior going to her last high school classes EVER.

Last night, a girl with a prom dress and a date.

Tomorrow, back to the animal shelter, after an absence of five years, for a month-long senior project.

It was all too fast.

I love you, sweetie.

A Laywoman's Lectionary: The Moon Sets at Easter - For the Second Second of Easter (4/3/05)

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who are being protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

In this you rejoice, even if now for a little while you have had to suffer various trials, so that the genuineness of your faith--being more precious than gold that, though perishable, is tested by fire--may be found to result in praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.
Although you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy, for you are receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls. (1 Peter 1:3-9) [NRSV]

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How extraordinarily fitting, that this particular passage from the first letter of Peter should be one of the texts for tomorrow, as Pope John Paul II, today's "Peter," the rock upon which Christ has built his church, passes from this world to the next.

I haven't been here for awhile. Life often catches up with me early in the year, and I tend to miss much of Lent as I contend with what seems like the endlessness of winter. I usually emerge from my mental cave just in time for Easter, and then retreat again almost immediately as the clouds and snow return (which they have done with a vengeance this morning).
This year has been a bit different. While winter made its inevitable journey through the northern hemisphere, my stepmother was making a pilgrimmage of her own as cancer invaded her body. One morning a few weeks ago, I sat with her for the last half- hour of her earthly life. It was the first time that I had been with someone at the end of this journey. There were no trumpets, no angels, no mists in the wee hours of the morning. Her face did not break into recognition as she made the transition, and the room did not fill with light.

But as I sat there, as she died and for quite awhile afterward, I was sure that I was in another dimension of existence, somewhere between this world and another one. It was a powerful experience of place and not-place, of time and not-time.

It was indeed a sense of an entryway into an "imperishable inheritance", a passageway under the "protection of the power of God." The Pope must be in that place now, "receiving the outcome of a faith" that has supported one of the strongest voices of our time.

A Laywoman's Lectionary: Scarcity and Abundance - For the First Sunday in Lent (2/13/05)

Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished. The tempter came and said to him, "If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread." But he answered, "It is written, 'One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.'"

Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, "If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written, 'He will command his angels concerning you,' and 'On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.'" Jesus said to him, "Again it is written, 'Do not put the Lord your God to the test.'"

Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor; and he said to him, "All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me." Jesus said to him, "Away with you, Satan! for it is written, 'Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.'" Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him. (Matthew 4:1-11) [NRSV]

Many of us have issues with food. Sometimes such difficult ones that we think that forty days without would be easier than going on Weight Watchers. People who struggle with eating disorders are sometimes heard to wish that their problem was instead alcohol, or cigarette smoking -- it seems that it would be easier to eliminate something completely from our lives than to have to monitor it judiciously. But the real truth is that we know that 40 days without food would be close to impossible and, definitely, impossibly dangerous. We know that so well that, unless we are really ill, we don't even entertain the idea. It's more likely that we'll respond as I did the other day, when entering a newly renovated bakery. The sign above the door says, "Man CAN live on bread alone!" But woman, I thought, needs a Margarita, too.

So why doesn't a hungry Jesus just turn those stones to bread?

How about testing God to care for us? How many bargains have you made with God? I started when I was a little girl, an incipient atheist in the making. "God, " I would say as I lay in bed at night, "prove yourself. Just move that table over there. Just a couple of inches. I need a sign!" As I got older and moved into the wretchedness of what passed for adolescence in my life, I gave up hope that there would ever be a sign. I threw myself repeatedly into the way of danger without ever a thought that there was anyone to protect me.

But Jesus had every reason to be confident. Why didn't he grab that opportunity to show off the power of God?

And finally, the big one. The whole world. Anything you want. I spend a lot of time thinking about things I want. A redecorated downstairs. Functional plumbing in the spare bathroom. A bigger yard. A hot tub. A entirely different yard for the hot tub -- one several hundred miles away where it's sunny ALL WINTER. My stepmother's recovery. My children's guaranteed health and safety. The Mastercard bill paid off. No more emotional trauma. A month in Italy and one in France. An organized basement. A full night's sleep.

So why didn't Jesus want all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor?

I've been taking a class on the 13th-14th century German mystic Meister Eckhart and last night some of our discussion revolved around issues of scarcity and abundance. What do we think we need? What do we cling to? Why?

The answer to the "Why?" seems to be a simply and yet terribly complex one: fear. We fear scarcity. We fear, ultimately, scarcity of love, of God's love. In a passage from a book called Beauty by an author new to me, John O'Donohue, our instructor read (and I have to paraphrase here): Unless we say "Yes" to God's love, we operate out of a sense of scarcity and begin to back off and protect ourselves.

What we do, it seems to me, is look for every opportunity to turn stones to bread, to prove that we are safe, and to take over the world -- as least as much of it as we personally think we need.

"Sometimes," says O'Donohue, " the urgency of our hunger blinds us to the fact that we're already at the feast."

That's what Jesus knew -- that he was already there. Hungry and tired and lonely and no doubt in need of a bath, he knew that he was in the midst of the abundance of his father's love. The things to which one would expect a king to be attached -- rich food, a show of power, command over all that lay before him -- were of no significance to him. They were nothing but signs of scarcity, of our eagerness to fill our lives with emptiness and overlook the abundance of the present moment.

It would be a good thing if, for Lent, I could focus on the abundance of the present moment. The honest truth, though, is that it's a clear night out there, with Orion and an exact half-moon starkly etched into the sky, and I wish there were a hot tub on the back porch.

A Laywoman's Lectionary: Thin Places - For the Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time (Transfiguration Sunday) (2/6/05)

Thin Places - For the Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time (Transfiguration Sunday) (2/6/05)
Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white.

Suddenly there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him. Then Peter said to Jesus, "Lord, it is good for us to be here; if you wish, I will make three dwellings here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah."

While he was still speaking, suddenly a bright cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud a voice said, "This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!"
When the disciples heard this, they fell to the ground and were overcome by fear. But Jesus came and touched them, saying, "Get up and do not be afraid." And when they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus himself alone.

As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus ordered them, "Tell no one about the vision until after the Son of Man has been raised from the dead." (Matthew 17:1-9)[NRSV]

It was September of 1981 and we had hiked all the way from Glenns Lake to Stoney Indian Lake in Glacier Park. According to the brief note in my photographic journal, the trek UP over Stoney Indian Pass was so challenging that we were too exhausted to take many pictures. I did manage to note, however, that we had seen a dipper -- a small mountain bird that walks upstream, bobbing up and down in icy mountain flows. Those of you who are birders and maintain life lists will recognize a dipper as something of a big deal, at least for someone from Ohio -- a state with no icy mountain rivers and, therefore, no dippers.

At the end of the day, we collapsed into Stoney Indian Campground, a spot so isolated that we had seen no other hikers all day and would see none until the next evening. Its loneliness was compounded by its treelessness, meaning that it offered no place from which to hang food packs out of the reach of bears.

When you pack into the Glacier backcountry, the presence of grizzly bears dominates your consciousness. You waiver endlessly between a hopeful longing to see one of those magnificent creatures with the silver-tipped fur rise from the ground (in the distance, of course) and a heart-thumping terror that one will choose your campsite as its evening dining facility, leaving no evidence that you were ever there. Needless to say, Stoney Indian, utterly devoid of human artifacts, was at once exhilarating and nerve-wracking.

Perhaps it was the isolation and tension of the place. Perhaps it was the exhaustion from the hike. Perhaps it was the joyful little dipper. But, trite as it seems, I think that it was the view from Stomey Indian that convinced me, maybe for the first time in my life, of the existence of God as Creator and Spirit. As the sun began to set, the puffs of white clouds cast long shadows across the granite mountains, which rise well above the tree line. The mountains stretched and reached and slid across the horizon in shades of purple and gold and gray. The air was still and the space was silent. A space wide and wild enough for God. God may have walked in a garden in the cool of one evening, but I think that God strode across mountains in the twilight of others.

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I originally wrote what's above for our church's Lenten devotional booklet last year.

"All things that rise must converge." So Flannery O'Connor titled a short story, although if she borrowed the title from someone else, I can't remember.

Last Sunday, our pastor began to preach on the "thin places." I was baffled for a few minutes, wondering why her theme sounded so familiar. Then she referenced Marcus Borg's description of the thin places, those places on earth where it seems, somehow, that God is much closer than in our usual experience. At that point I knew that I must have heard Marcus Borg himself speak about the thin places,at Chautauqua one summer. (Chautuauqa itself is often one of the thin places.)

Then Sunday evening I picked up the little book that's making the rounds at church for this year's Lenten season: Celtic Prayers from Iona by J. Philip Newell. Iona is a very small island off the west coast of Scotland, where Celtic Christianity was born for Ireland the sixth century. Iona has been described by George MacLeod, the founder of its twentieth century community, as " 'a thin place', in which the material realm is only thinly separated from the spiritual."

This entry represents my own first experience of a "thin place." It seemed appropriate for the day on which the story of the Transfiguration appears in the lectionary texts.