The Wise Women

Giotto, 1304-1306.


This was one of the readings at my church's Women's Lessons and Carols service tonight. I don't know the source, but it was a quietly powerful reading. Even those of us who love the traditional Lessons and Carols service that originated at King's College Chapel Cambridge and is reprised in churches all over the world during Advent have to acknowledge that its litany follows the patriarchal traditions of the Bible. This alternative service, with a different selection of readings and music, lends itself to a different frame of reference.

"Long ago, women of wisdom from all over the earth began to gather together: mothers and grandmothers, sisters and daughters, cousins and aunts. They converged in order to witness and to midwife the birth of a holy little girl-child of mid-Eastern descent . . . perhaps an Iraqi.

This was distressing to the Herods of the earth, who are ever distressed and fearful when women gather together: the male Herods because of their fear that someone might displace them, and the female Herods because someone else might be the fairest of them all. The Herods asked the wise women where the child was to be born: 'Return and tell us,' they said, 'so that we may worship too!' (In other words, give us your wisdom.")

The wise women went on and found the place and helped the birth to come about. And they brought with them gifts -- corn, squash, beans, and bread -- these symbolizing the interconnectedness of all of life, gifts that could be used to feed the whole world.

So instead of the ancient gifts we've been told were brought -- gold for royalty, frankincense for worship of divinity, and myrhh for the embalming of the dead -- these women brought other gifts. Instead of royalty, they brought humility. Instead of worship, they brought partnership. Instead of death, they brought the knowledge of how to live.

And when they had offered their gifts, knowing that they dare not go back to Herod and to the old ways, they made their home with this child. . . and thereby came home in a different way.

Because of that, there was no slaughter of the innocents -- and no Rachel weeping for her children."

Winter Night, Sixty Years Ago

My grandmother leans against the back porch pillar, clutching her wool coat tightly round her and watching the moon cast its almost full light across the snow-laden field. Orion has settled against the winter black, belt twinkling and sword resting quietly at his side.

The feet, well padded with fur, make no sound as the rabbit emerges hopefully from the woods, eyeing the glacial surface before her for the slightest hint of rodent liveliness below.

The soft soft soft wingtips make no sound as they glide across the surface of the snow, the talons sink unerringly into fluff and flesh, and the newly weighted owl flaps silently over the buried cornstalks.

She settles on the branch below the old hawk nest destined for her chicks. Her mate hoots through the woods, his ardour rising. She fluffs her undercoat of down and dines restlessly. The long nights on eggs and beneath snowfall will come soon enough.

*************************

This came to me during my dog's final evening tour of the back yard tonight, as I stood on the back porch looking at the moon and Orion in the winter sky and hissing "Hurry up; it's freezing out here!" My grandmother is nearing 100 this winter, nearly blind and deaf, fretting away her final days with only her thoughts to occupy her. I hope she remembers nights like this, when nature's power held sway right off her own back porch.

Merry Christmas III

Aubade: The Annunciation - Written in 1946

When the dim light, at Lauds, comes strike her window,

Bellsong falls out of Heaven with a sound of glass.

Prayers fly in the mind like larks,

Thoughts hide in the height like hawks:

And while the country churches tell their blessings to the distance,

Her slow words move,

(Like summer winds the wheat) her innocent love:

Desires glitter in her mind

Like morning stars:

Until her name is suddenly spoken

Like a meteor falling.

She can no longer hear shrill day

Sing in the east,

Nor see the lovely woods begin to toss their manes.

The rivers have begun to sing.

The little clouds shine in the sky like girls:

She has no eyes to see their faces.

Speech of an angel shines in the waters of her thought like diamonds,

Rides like a sunburst on the hillsides of her heart.

And is brought home like harvests,

Hid in her house, and stored

Like the sweet summer's riches in our peaceful barns.

But in the world of March outside her dwelling,

The farmers and the planters

Fear to begin their sowing, and its lengthy labor,

Where, on the brown, bare furrows,

The winter wind still croons as dumb as pain.

-- Thomas Merton

Merry Christmas II

Sigh. . . . .

DEPARTURE
Scheduled:
9:15 PM
Estimated:
11:59 PM Reason: Schedule change due to Late Arriving Aircraft Terminal 1 Concourse B Gate: B4

ARRIVAL:
Scheduled:
11:28 PM
Estimated:
2:07 AM Reason: Schedule change due to Late Arriving Aircraft Concourse B Gate: B7

11:54/12:54: Hi Mom - We haven't boarded yet; there are so many people on standby and they're trying to get them all on.

Have they offered you a free flight to Europe yet?

Ever optimistic, even in the middle of the night. . . .

Merry Christmas I

I think the photo above looks bright and Christmasy.

It's actually an August rose in the Willamette College garden.

Last week-end it was a flight from Chicago; this week-end it's a flight to Chicago. Last week-end my son was delayed a day when Southwest cancelled a series of flights out of Chicago after their sad accident at Midway. Tonight my daughter's flight into Chicago from Portland was delayed a couple of hours; I guess we'll know whether she makes her connection if she makes her connection. So far they're saying that this is a repeat of last night and, if that has any predictive value, she'll get in around 2:00 a.m.

(I can hardly believe it. I haven't seen that girl since the day after Labor Day when I left her to pick up the pieces of her life in a new college in a new city 2000 miles from home less than a week after Katrina. She picked them up just fine. I guess that means she's turned into the woman I was hoping for.)

A 2:00 a.m. arrival gives me just enough time to fall asleep on the couch for a few minutes before taking same son back to the airport for his Christmas present trip to see his girlfriend in San Diego. A year ago it was his twin brother going to France to see his girlfriend. These kids don't waste a lot of time on the ground.

Today my friend Lisa posted a wonderful entry about what kind of writing she wants to do in her new blog. Or her old blog. Wherever. I'm right there with you, Lisa, in wanting to use my blog for some Real Writing. However my brain is in no way geared up for that tonight. All I'm capable of is blathering on about:

two trees up, one with lights, neither with decorations;

kitchen 1/16th (maybe) of the way painted;

turkey not yet ordered;

no presents purchased except that ticket to San Diego(next online stop!);

mission accomplished: shopping trip with sons for

Girlfriend Gift and Hostess Gift;

somewhere between 20 and 35 people here for dinner in exactly 9 days but I probably won't know how many until, yeah, 9 days from now;

trying to keep up with the latest news from Tulane University, which latest news changes approximately every 30 seconds;

and until Thursday night I have to remain marginally focused at work, at least enough to talk about the Mayflower, the Vietnam War, and the 17th-century world economy to students who are themselves increasingly focused on Chanukah but are quite willing to be diverted by Christmas.

Well, at least I'm not a divorce lawyer anymore. This is about the day when the phone lights up with calls from parents whose formerly beloveds have just conveyed the news that they will not be returning the kids after Christmas vacation and that if they want to call their lawyers they can just go ahead and do it.

'Tis the season.

I just want the plane on the ground.

Favorite Christmas Music

Another idea from Patrick, this one the Sunday Seven -- what are your favorite Christmas songs? He starts with suggestions from the ASCAP list, few of which do a thing for me. Most popular Christmas music is just Something That Must Be Endured, in the stores and when I'm flipping radio stations. In fact the other night, en route to the airport for the second time in as many days, I was overcome with ADHD and changing stations every few seconds, so I had a real taste of just how much dreadful stuff is out there. Why does every popular recording start feel the need to produce a really bad Christmas album?

Guess you can tell that this grinch isn't easily moved into a Christmas frame of mind. But this topic did get me moving, however slowly, toward my own stack of CDs; with less than two weeks to go, I really should be more Christmas-functional at this point.

Herewith, in no particular order, my favorites:

O, Holy Night

Sing We Noel (Dost Thou Remember) - the processional from my boarding school days, which I have only ever heard of being performed at Northfield Mount Hermon School, Mount Holyoke College, and my present church (yes, I am in posession of the sheet music and I CD, but I can;t find the muisc online)

There Shall a Star Come Out From From Jacob (Mendelssohn)

What Child Is This?

Once in Royal David's City -- as sung for Lessons and Carols, beginning with a child's high-pitched solo and reaching the fourth verse with a crescendo of full choirs and kettledrums

And Every Stone Shall Cry

SUCH a Great Teacher

So. . . today I went out to lunch and, since I had forgotten to bring anything to read, I picked up a New York Times at the counter.

Imagine my delight when, over my soup and salad, I came across a headline that read something like "21st Century Threat Rooted in the 7th." It seems that members of the Bush administration are wandering around the United States making noises about the imminence of a new caliphate, and that most Americans have a vague enough understanding of the term as dark and ominous and scary that its proclamation by one Donald Rumsfeld just might scarf up a little support for the war in Iraq.

Well, I am always happy for the opportunity to demonstrate to my students that yes, there IS value in studying world history. They can, for instance, read the headlines intelligently.

Right.

I whipped out my paper at about 4:30 this afternoon and said, "OK, guys, here's the headline. Now what should it mean to a well-educated world history student?"

As it developed, we had to deal with a literacy-related challenge first. None of them could figure out the sentence.

"Seventh what?"

"Seventh sea?"

"Seventh inning?"

Finally one young man was able to establish to what "seventh" referred.

"Ok," I sighed, considerably less enthusiastic than I had been a few minutes earlier. "Now what happened in the seventh century? What happen that was so important that someone might be walking around saying that it is the root of our problems today?"

"The Black Death?"

"The Fall of the Roman Empire?"

I penciled on the board with my fingernail (no markers in sight), "Ms. C. is a failure," and then I turned to them and said, "If you do not come in here tomorrow afternoon remembering exactly what happened in the seventh century, I am going straight from here to the principal's office to request that he remove the "honors" designation from your transcripts."

Then I suggested they get back to work on the 16th century Latin American economy.

As I walked through the hallway later while they were dumping out the contents of their lockers and packing up to go home, several of my students stopped me to tell me that yes, they now know what happened in the seventh century. And one of them had the grace to admit that yes, since we had spent most of the month of September on that particular topic, the threatened demise of their honors status was not unreasonable.

Sigh. We haven't even come close to the real issue -- whether the headline is accurate, biased, or incendiary. Maybe tomorrow.

(Answer: The founding and rise of Islam.)

Tables Turning

I sent this photo to some friends today and one of them responded that I looked "ready for anything." Let's hope that that's the case.

At this particular moment, I'm listening live to the Christmas Vespers concert from my boarding school in western Massachusetts. My son made it home from Chicago tonight and, as I waited for his flight to arrive, I reflected on how things have changed. If I were a teenager in the Connecticut Valley, I would be in a candle-lit chapel participating in a concert of haunting beauty and anticipating my own flight home. But now when I go to the airport at holiday time, it's to pick up and drop off -- my own Christmas traveling days are long behind me.

For the last couple of years I could deny it, but this year I can't: all three children have gone and we are the ones at home, anticicpating their return. It's an odd feeling. They all have lives, activities, friends, far from us. We've never met either of our sons' most important girlfriends of the past couple of years. When they come back, they spend some time with their best friends of those Montessori years past, the closely knit group that numbered only 15 by the time they graduated from eighth grade and headed for six or seven different high schools, and then they are eager to return to the lives they have created as young adults.

I found myself thinking tonight that maybe we should have had the tree decorated and waiting for them. It's always been a family tradition that the five of us choose the tree together, with much squabbling over height and width, and then decorate it over the course of a week. But Christmas will be only a week away by the time the lovely daughter returns -- maybe it's time to revamp that tradition and create a festive atmosphere to welcome them home.

The truth is, I'm not ready for anything. I'd like to turn the clock back at least a few years.

Death of an American City
New York Times, December 11, 2005

We are about to lose New Orleans. Whether it is a conscious plan to let the city rot until no one is willing to move back or honest paralysis over difficult questions, the moment is upon us when a major American city will die, leaving nothing but a few shells for tourists to visit like a museum.

We said this wouldn't happen. President Bush said it wouldn't happen. He stood in Jackson Square and said, "There is no way to imagine America without New Orleans." But it has been over three months since Hurricane Katrina struck and the city is in complete shambles.

There are many unanswered questions that will take years to work out, but one is make-or-break and needs to be dealt with immediately. It all boils down to the levee system. People will clear garbage, live in tents, work their fingers to the bone to reclaim homes and lives, but not if they don't believe they will be protected by more than patches to the same old system that failed during the deadly storm. Homeowners, businesses and insurance companies all need a commitment before they will stake their futures on the city.

At this moment the reconstruction is a rudderless ship. There is no effective leadership that we can identify. How many people could even name the president's liaison for the reconstruction effort, Donald Powell? Lawmakers need to understand that for New Orleans the words "pending in Congress" are a death warrant requiring no signature.

The rumbling from Washington that the proposed cost of better levees is too much has grown louder. Pretending we are going to do the necessary work eventually, while stalling until the next hurricane season is upon us, is dishonest and cowardly. Unless some clear, quick commitments are made, the displaced will have no choice but to sink roots in the alien communities where they landed.

The price tag for protection against a Category 5 hurricane, which would involve not just stronger and higher levees but also new drainage canals and environmental restoration, would very likely run to well over $32 billion. That is a lot of money. But that starting point represents just 1.2 percent of this year's estimated $2.6 trillion in federal spending, which actually overstates the case, since the cost would be spread over many years. And it is barely one-third the cost of the $95 billion in tax cuts passed just last week by the House of Representatives.

Total allocations for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the war on terror have topped $300 billion. All that money has been appropriated as the cost of protecting the nation from terrorist attacks. But what was the worst possible case we fought to prevent?

Losing a major American city.

"We'll not just rebuild, we'll build higher and better," President Bush said that night in September. Our feeling, strongly, is that he was right and should keep to his word. We in New York remember well what it was like for the country to rally around our city in a desperate hour. New York survived and has flourished. New Orleans can too.

Of course, New Orleans's local and state officials must do their part as well, and demonstrate the political and practical will to rebuild the city efficiently and responsibly. They must, as quickly as possible, produce a comprehensive plan for putting New Orleans back together. Which schools will be rebuilt and which will be absorbed? Which neighborhoods will be shored up? Where will the roads go? What about electricity and water lines? So far, local and state officials have been derelict at producing anything that comes close to a coherent plan. That is unacceptable.

The city must rise to the occasion. But it will not have that opportunity without the levees, and only the office of the president is strong enough to goad Congress to take swift action. Only his voice is loud enough to call people home and convince them that commitments will be met.

Maybe America does not want to rebuild New Orleans. Maybe we have decided that the deficits are too large and the money too scarce, and that it is better just to look the other way until the city withers and disappears. If that is truly the case, then it is incumbent on President Bush and Congress to admit it, and organize a real plan to help the dislocated residents resettle into new homes. The communities that opened their hearts to the Katrina refugees need to know that their short-term act of charity has turned into a permanent commitment.

If the rest of the nation has decided it is too expensive to give the people of New Orleans a chance at renewal, we have to tell them so. We must tell them we spent our rainy-day fund on a costly stalemate in Iraq, that we gave it away in tax cuts for wealthy families and shareholders. We must tell them America is too broke and too weak to rebuild one of its great cities.

Our nation would then look like a feeble giant indeed. But whether we admit it or not, this is our choice to make. We decide whether New Orleans lives or dies.

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.